opinion 9
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Kinstler: Me and my 3,415 closest friends Ethan Kinstler Staff Writer “Be yourself because everyone else is already taken.” These words were on the poster that stared back at me every day in my seventh-grade math class. This quote was also a favorite of my overzealous guidance counselor, who relentlessly tried to convince socially anxious middle-schoolers not to care about other people’s opinions. Cool, right? Conveniently, she failed to mention how we should go about dismissing the harsh gaze of our unforgiving classmates—a Herculean task for me, considering I was a fourfoot-something 12-year-old with the pastiest of skin, freckles galore and hair so red and bushy it would put Little Orphan Annie to shame. I was hardly blending into any crowds unless, of course, it was a crowd of clowns. People love to tell us to “just be yourself” when we feel insecure, believing it’s life-changing advice, but nobody ever tells us how to “just be yourself.” That’s because the “how” is hard to figure out. Everyone struggles with insecurity. It’s hard to keep ourselves from wondering why that person unfollowed us on Instagram or didn’t smile at us this morning. It’s challenging not to internalize these situations as questioning our core characteristics. The fact is that we learn how to be confident, but nobody learns how to be insecure. Our insecurities are inherently part of who we are. Sure, different situations in our life awaken us to our insecurities. However, we do not have to actively seek out our flaws to know they are there; instead, we
need to actively nurture our sense of self in order to build confidence. It’s human nature to want to be liked. Evolutionarily, it was extremely advantageous to “fit in”; the caveman who strayed from the group got eaten by prehistoric beasts. Survival of the fittest taught us that it was really survival of the most well-liked; when people like us, they help us, and vice versa. All this science means that you currently seek out those Instagram likes as a manifestation of this primordial instinct to survive, and there is nothing wrong with wanting our friends and others to like us. But, often, we judge how well-liked we are through avenues like social media— even though how many likes you get won’t help you survive—, and therein lies the disconnect. While our brains tell us that we need to fit in to survive, we continually judge how successfully we fit in based on arbitrary things. This column isn’t going to be a trite anecdote filled with self-righteous grandiloquence about how the opinions of others don’t matter as long as you’re happy—we both know that sentiment won’t stop you from worrying about what others think. So go ahead and worry if you must. Just make sure you’re worrying about the right people. Imagine, it is the first day of the semester, and you walk into your first class. Who are the people you would be excited to see in class with you? Or, think about the last time you laughed uncontrollably. When was the last time something was so funny that it is now an inside joke? Did it make you smile to think about
that? Who shares the inside joke with you? While I’m giving you a pass on the whole “worrying about what others think” thing, try and limit yourself to only worrying about what these people think—the people with whom you have the inside jokes; who you are excited to see in your classes. These are the people who would make sure you didn’t get eaten by the prehistoric beasts, and therefore, these are the people who are advantageous in your survival. Just because you got 300 likes on an Instagram post does not mean that 300 people would make you soup if you were sick. It doesn’t mean that 300 people would ask you how your day is going. It doesn’t mean that you have memories that make you smile with 300 different people, and that’s okay. As long as you have some people who make you smile when you think about your time with them or people whose presence makes you happy, you’re doing something right. Sometimes, all it takes is one person that makes you smile. All it took was another caveman asking, “where did Jimmy go?” to make the group search and save you from a man-eating lion. The people who make you smile, ask about your day and go the extra mile to say hello are whose opinion you should value. You don’t need @ becky_likes_cats343’s validation. ` Furthermore, because our anxiety and drive to seek external validation stems from a judgment of our survival potential, we may also compare ourselves to others as another way to judge how successfully
we are “surviving.” Yet again, the 100 comments of heart emojis and compliments on someone else’s post doesn’t mean that those 100 people would be there for them on a rough day. At best, it means that 100 people are too scared to form their own personalities, so they latch onto someone else whose personality is big enough for the both of them. You can never know what is going on inside someone’s head, and sometimes the loneliest people exude the most confidence to mask their insecurities. When we feel anxious because someone else is more popular on social media, we project our insecurities onto them. While we might only get five comments on our posts, those comments are from our closest friends. We might assume that the person receiving hundreds of comments are from the abundance of close friends, but in reality, nobody has 100 genuine friends. Look, I have 3,415 followers on Instagram. I don’t know 3,415 people. Of those 3,415 followers, I only consider 30 of them to be my good friends. Of those 30, about 15 have not posted anything on Instagram in upwards of a year. If I were to judge how well I fit in by how many of my actual friends comment on my Instagram, I would consistently miss half the people in my life who love and support me. Again, I’m not going to tell you not to worry; just make sure you’re worrying about the right things and people.
Gonzalez: It’s time to let sexually active queer men donate blood Joey Gonzalez Copy Editor As the nation enters another blood crisis, fueled by a seemingly endless pandemic, sexually active queer men are still barred from helping to combat the shortage. The Red Cross recently announced that the United States is experiencing the worst blood shortage in over a decade, with donations and supplies dangerously low as the pandemic rages on. Hospitals and doctors are yet again forced to make difficult decisions about who receives life-saving care in the form of blood. The organization itself was forced to limit its blood delivery to hospitals as it desperately tries to provide 40% of the country’s blood supply. The Red Cross and other blood collection organizations are begging for donations to help combat the shortage. Furthermore, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) holds firm to its discriminatory and harmful policies, making the Red Cross’ job increasingly more difficult. While many blood collection organizations acknowledge the harm this policy presents to queer men and the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole, federal law requires that they enforce it. An outdated and frankly discriminatory law put in place by the FDA prohibits gay and bisexual men from donating blood within three months of their last sexual encounter with another man. The policy originates from the fears of the AIDS and HIV epidemic, where queer men were solely blamed for the spread of both diseases and, as a result, barred from blood donations. The original policy
established a blanket ban on blood donations from high-risk groups, including intravenous drug users, recipients of animal organ or tissue grafts, and those who had travelled or lived in specific countries. This policy is understandable considering there was no way to test individuals for the diseases, blood donations or the blood supply as a whole. With advancements in testing and increased awareness of the disease, the FDA changed its blanket ban in December 2015, allowing queer men to donate blood with the clause that they are required to abstain from sexual activity with another man for at least a year. While this policy was a small step in the relative scheme of blood donation rights, the federal law remains discriminatory and harms not only the LGBTQIA+ community, but also the American public. The FDA only recently revisited their policy during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as blood donation organizations were forced to shut down blood drives across the United States. In 2020, the FDA announced that sexually active gay and bisexual men were still barred from donating blood; however, the period which disqualified them as eligible donors was lowered from a year to three months. While this revision is a positive step towards eliminating the discriminatory policy, it was driven not by the advancements in testing or preventative technologies, but instead, by desperation. Queer men only became viable candidates for donating blood out of desperation,
yet they are still expected to sacrifice their sexual lives, regardless of the circumstances, in order to be deemed worthy of donating blood. We are lucky to live in a time when an HIV diagnosis is no longer a guaranteed death sentence. While there is no cure for HIV, advancements in technologies and medicines have provided plenty of options for people living with the disease. There are HIV preventatives, like PrEP, which is a pill taken as an HIV preventative for non-positive individuals. There are also options for people with HIV that can lower the levels of the virus in their body and make it undetectable to our current tests, and therefore non transmissible to a partner. Testing for HIV has also seen significant advancements as they become increasingly more accurate. Yet, with all of these advancements and measures, our laws continually blame queer men for the spread of HIV and AIDS. The FDA’s policy acts as a blanket ban, rather than analyzing on a caseby-case basis. It sets a dangerous and frankly harmful precedent for queer and LGBTQIA+ rights. What options do queer men have other than celibacy? Further, the policy isn’t actually enforced, meaning someone collecting blood cannot make assumptions about your sexual history and therefore prevent you from donating blood. However, it’s dangerous to establish a system where people are forced to lie to their healthcare professionals to do something as simple and selfless as donating blood. There
is also no option for queer men who do not live a promiscuous lifestyle, such as those on HIV preventatives, those in healthy monogamous relationships or continually up to date on their HIV and other sexually transmitted disease statuses. So, where does this leave queer men, and what are the possible solutions to the ban? While I acknowledge there is a need to quell the spread of HIV, it doesn’t start with blood donations. We need proper LGBTQIA+ sex education in schools so queer kids can learn safe sex practices. There is also a need for general education about LGBTQIA+ issues like the transmission of HIV. The laws that still exist—which stem back from the AIDS epidemic, like the blood donation ban—often continue to exist because of ignorance and improper education. In regards to the ban, the developments in technology have allowed us to gain greater accuracy in testing for HIV and other diseases in blood supplies and donations. There should be no need to disqualify an entire community as viable donors, especially to help end the current and future blood shortages. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all blood donations are tested for diseases and pathogens like HIV. We possess the capabilities and policies to curb the spread of HIV in our blood supply, but the United States continues to cling to its discriminatory laws, which bar gay and bisexual men from donating blood.