Yelling at the Red Cross, again

[azurelunatic]

"Dear? Is it okay if I send the Red Cross a vaguely threatening letter?"

I would very much like to avoid being called by my dead name when getting contacted about my donation. Unfortunately, your email today to confirm my blood donation appointment was personalized with that name. That makes twice, today. Your nice phone agent found an old account under my dead name and merged them, and did not seem to register that the name I had given to her was important. Later in the call she used the wrong name. I asked her to please use [my initials] and she said she would enter it as a nickname. This evidently does not feed into the email personalization. It sends a clear signal that while the intentions of every person may be good, the systems they rely on will likely set them up to give me a bad day.

The name that should be used in email, face to face communication, and every other context that is not literally looking at my ID should be [as above].

If you want transgender blood donors, this is important to get correct. Due to the blood shortages, I suspect you need every donor you can get.

(The vague threat, of course, is that I will tell every other transgender person I know about how their system seems to work.)

Comments

[silveradept]

There is another blood donation organization in your area, but I have no idea whether or not they are any better about needing to be vaguely threatened or not.

[azurelunatic]

I have several ears and am listening!

[silveradept]

Cascade Regional Blood Services also does blood donation work, and I feel like they might be better at a lot of things, since their FAQ states:

To that end, we strongly support ongoing research initiatives designed to determine if donor-screening alternatives based on individual behaviors, not based on sexual or gender identity, will provide equivalent or superior transfusion safety. We encourage the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to continue its examination of deferral criteria for men who have had sex with men (MSM) to ensure the use of rational, science-based deferral periods that are applied fairly and consistently among blood donors.