Banning Queer Blood
ISBN: 9780817389635
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / The University of Alabama Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Social Responsibility.; Social Identification.; Health Policy.; Homosexuality Male.; Blood Donors.; Blood; Gay men.; Blood donors.;

Frames blood donation as a performance of civic identity closely linked to the meaning of citizenship

In Banning Queer Blood , Jeffrey Bennett frames blood donation as a performance of civic identity closely linked to the meaning of citizenship. However, with the advent of HIV came the notion of blood donation as a potentially dangerous process. Bennett argues that the Food and Drug Administration, by employing images that specifically depict gay men as contagious, has categorized gay men as a menace to the nation. The FDA's ban on blood donation by gay men served to propagate the social misconceptions about gay men that continue to circulate within both the straight and LGBT/Queer communities.

Bennett explores the role of scientific research cited by these banned-blood policies and its disquieting relationship to government agencies, including the FDA. Bennett draws parallels between the FDA's position on homosexuality and the historical precedents of discrimination by government agencies against racial minorities. The author concludes by describing the resistance posed by queer donors, who either lie in order to donate blood or protest discrimination at donation sites, and by calling for these prejudiced policies to be abolished.





Jeffrey A. Bennett is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He has published articles in The Quarterly Journal of Speech , Critical Studies in Media Communication , The Journal of Homosexuality , Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies , and Text and Performance Quarterly .



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