In one of their latest episodes, “Slabtown,” The Walking Dead has shown us that five seasons into a show brimming over with death and gore, sexual assault and the loss of bodily autonomy is often a bigger threat than the undead.

Rape isn’t an uncommon topic in television and is far more likely to be shown than the cannibalism in the previous episode. I shouldn’t feel so shocked by this episode, right? So why was I? The conclusion I’ve come to is that rape is not an issue talked about in television. It gets glossed over constantly. I’m sure we can all look back on any given episode of a prime time crime show and find a brand-new character (who will inevitably be gone by the end of the episode) who has been raped. It has become a farce of the system and the traumatic event is completely removed from the reality of rape. In real life, someone who has been sexually assaulted doesn’t just magically disappear at the end of an episode.

According to The Scientific American, “The victim of a car accident can require as many as 100 pints of blood—that’s blood from 100 generous donors across the country, meticulously matched for blood type and screened for diseases. More than 38,000 blood donations are needed daily in the U.S., but only 38 percent of Americans are eligible to donate blood, and of those, only 8 percent actually do.”

Gay and bisexual men are among those 62% of disqualified American donors who are banned by the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) from donating. Their reasoning is that men who have had sex with other men are at an “increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and certain other infections that can be transmitted by transfusion.” Interestingly enough, however, women who have had heterosexual sex with an HIV positive partner only have to wait one year before being allowed to donate. NBC News also reported, “In 40 states, a man can even give blood immediately after getting a tattoo.” It seems that this “health regulation” is only applied to gay and bisexual men.