In an effort to reduce barriers preventing trans and gender non-binary people from donating blood, Canadian Blood Services held consultations in Vancouver and Toronto. I attended the Vancouver meeting, November 17th, 2016. The report that came out of these consultations was published May 19th, 2017.
While it is a step forward for Canadian Blood Services (CBS) to consider transgender and gender non-binary folks in their blood donation protocols, it’s telling that these consultations are necessary. Rather than focusing on risky behaviours, CBS has preferred to focus on sexual orientation, to determine who may or may not donate blood. Gender identity was not considered when they were crafting these restrictions.
Sexual orientation and gender identity are not to be confused, but the two present similar issues, under current CBS regulations. Fortunately, the trans folks present at the consultations recognized this and held CBS accountable for their discriminatory practices and non-binary erasure.
Given the tainted blood scandal, it’s not surprising that CBS would want to protect themselves against risk. Unfortunately, they’ve done this by asking the wrong questions, and by vilifying people. There’s no screening question asking about gender identity; instead, folks must choose “male” or “female,” and staff will intervene if someone ‘looks trans,’ which is relative, discretionary, and insulting.
A risky behaviour, that CBS wants to know if you’ve participated in, is anal sex. Rather than asking if folks have had anal sex, and risk offending some cishet women, they ask men if they are gay, and ask women if they have had sexual relations with a man who is gay. In this scenario, they consider trans women to be men, until a year after GCS.
Trans people cannot donate blood within 1 year of having gender confirmation surgery (GCS), but fail to mention which surgeries this includes. CBS takes this broad-brush approach because they don’t want to ask men if they’ve been pregnant within the past year. In this scenario, they consider trans men to be women, until a year after GCS.
CBS has a history of LGBTQ2+ discrimination, and erasure of non-binary and pre-op/non-op identities, but donating blood is extremely important for our healthcare system. For this reason, many trans and non-binary people came together to provide their input and their suggestions for how Canadian Blood Services can do better. CBS seems to have listened and now say that they are looking to move toward a behaviour-based screening process.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound as though change will come quickly. Canadian Blood Services estimates that it will take around 10 years for significant changes to be implemented through Health Canada. We may see forms of “blood pasteurization” become available before these changes are made, which could negate the need for many of CBS’ regulations.
CBS commits to “[moving] forward on research related to the donor deferral policy for men who have sex with men (MSM) and explore options for changing to behaviour-based screening criteria.” It’s surprising that they would have introduced a ban on men who have sex with men, without having already done this research, without defining “men,” and without defining the act of sex. This appears to have been a knee-jerk reaction to the tainted blood scandal, based in fear, rather than fact.
In the near future, CBS plans to “implement a training program for front-line staff focused on better understanding and respecting trans and gender non-binary individuals,” and “explore how to modify clinic processes to allow trans individuals to select the gender with which they identify.”
– NICOLA SPURLING –
nicsnews.ca 