Smear The Queer, plaster, wax, wood, glass, artist’s tooth
cluded. There was a girl who participated who
had sex I believe six times in the past twelve
months, with six different partners, and she
was still allowed to donate blood.
And it’s specifically gay men? Are lesbians
allowed to donate blood?
Lesbians are allowed to donate blood as well as
straight men and women.
This is something that I’ve never considered and I love that you are drawing
attention to it. This is an issue and it is
preventing you from doing things that ev25
eryone else is allowed to do just because
you can’t answer “no” to one question.
You’re being discriminated against.
Yep. It’s tough.
What was your “FDA” process for finding
those 30 people? Did you reverse discriminate against them?
I did actually try to see if I could discriminate
against them during the process. I talked to
Ryan Buyssens a lot and his hope for the piece
was that when you actually go through the
process that straight men and women feel the
same discrimination that the gay men might
feel. I was trying to find people that would actively be denied or rejected. That was part of
the piece; I had to reject people simply based
on the questions. I pretty much had to accept
all of the blood, except for the blood from the
gay men that I had asked to donate.
And you said that one woman had sex
with six different partners in the past
twelve months?
Yes, and she had not been tested. That’s the
whole thing, the testing process. Regardless of
how many partners she had, she was unknowing and still was able to donate. It’s the same
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