The original rule bars ‘a man who has had sex with a man’ - X—and then any women who’ve had sex with X. It’s a logical phrasing but unfortunately X maps exactly onto “gay man”, so it feels like gay men are being specifically targeted. The rephrasing mollifies that sense of targeting without, as far as I can tell, changing the included or excluded people.
The original phrase is even-handed, however. If you overspecified an even-handed rule and said “1) You cannot donate if you’re a man who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man, and 2) you cannot donate if you’re a woman who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man”—ie, prevent “man who has had sex with a man” from coming into sexual contact with any donor—you could reduce 1) down to “man who has had sex with a man” (it logically implies three, four, and so on iterations). This, therefore, reduces down to the actual rule they have in place.
The original rule bars ‘a man who has had sex with a man’ - X—and then any women who’ve had sex with X. It’s a logical phrasing but unfortunately X maps exactly onto “gay man”, so it feels like gay men are being specifically targeted. The rephrasing mollifies that sense of targeting without, as far as I can tell, changing the included or excluded people.
The original phrase is even-handed, however. If you overspecified an even-handed rule and said “1) You cannot donate if you’re a man who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man, and 2) you cannot donate if you’re a woman who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man”—ie, prevent “man who has had sex with a man” from coming into sexual contact with any donor—you could reduce 1) down to “man who has had sex with a man” (it logically implies three, four, and so on iterations). This, therefore, reduces down to the actual rule they have in place.