Banning Queer Blood

“In Banning Queer Blood, Jeffrey Bennett succeeds marvelously in narrating the conundrum of ‘men who have sex with men’ (MSM), who at work, in social life, and in patriotic political talk are collectively hailed into the sacrificing ritual of blood donation, yet who are also wholly dispermitted from and thus perpetually fail this ritual of citizenship. What keeps in place a policy that is unevenly supported by current scientific capabilities and undermined by current safety procedures at blood donation centers?”
—Rhetoric Public Affairs

“Every day, the American Red Cross asks 22,000 potential blood donors: ‘Are you a male who has had sexual contact with another male, even one, since 1977?’ A ‘yes’ bars potential donors from giving blood. As Bennett points out, the ‘odds of contracting HIV through blood transfusions are extraordinarily miniscule’; moreover, banning this and other purportedly ‘high risk groups’ does not guarantee the purity of the blood supply. Bennett shows how the rhetorical power of ‘blood’ as a metaphor of national belonging outweighs epidemiological knowledge about blood. Bennett's important contribution challenges the neat divide between public health and civil rights.”
—CHOICE

“[Banning Queer Blood] traces the intersection of HIV/AIDS, blood supplies, the Red Cross, and queerness over the last quarter–century. . . . The methods used by the author include performativity/queer theory, archival research, rhetorical analysis, and interviews. . . . Throughout I found myself spellbound by the stories told, the ways of telling them, and the subtle methods of procuring and producing them.”
—Toby Miller, author of Cultural Citizenship and The Well–Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject