I have a friend who is HIV positive and was distressed when turned down sex with someone they have a sexual history with because they joined a polycule that as a rule don’t allow members to have sex with anyone with HIV.
Wondering what the thoughts are here about that.
It’s a difficult situation to be sure.
Blanket exclusion from romantic relationships and friendships is insane, and that says way more about the existing polycule than the person with HIV.
Sexual relationships are a different topic of course. I think the whole ‘we’re going to make a blacklist database of people you have slept with’ is creepy and abusive. We have readily available STD testing in this part of the world, we have safer sex, and we have agency over ourselves. An HIV-positive person is not a rabid animal to protect your loved ones from, they’re a person one can talk to and communicate with.
Of course everyone can set limits about their own sexual activity and even feel uncomfortable with sleeping with someone who has had sexual contact with an HIV-positive person – even if it was with protection – but I think such a bureaucratic process like you described seriously dehumanises the person in question. I generally dislike the tendency of some polycules to become bureaucratised cliques with tribunals, evidence lockers and subterfuge. I don’t want to date the equivalent of an HR investigative board.
I think the best way to handle this is to rely on the person with HIV to be responsible about disease management, and set your own boundaries for your own sexual activities in addition. If you can’t trust them to responsibly handle their infection status, why would you consider bringing them in the polycule in the first place? And if you can trust them, why the humiliation and dehumanisation of a high court process and privacy-violating ‘investigation’?
By definition, polycules include people who all members are cool with, and exclude everyone else. If a member has cancer or is otherwise already immunocomprimised, excluding people with STI’s makes sense.
People need what they need to feel safe, and as long as noone was coerced, but agreed willingly to this particular set of STI risk management rules, I don’t see an issue with them. And it seems like your friend’s friend has done so. If they didn’t want to give up sex with your friend, then they shouldn’t have entered a polycule that has rules like that.
I can definitely understand that your friend is hurt, though - they’ve basically been told “My new relationship is more important to me than our existing relationship”, and I think it’s pretty weak sauce from your friend’s friend that they try to put that on the polycule’s rules (like “I don’t want to, they’re making me do it, I have no choice!” bullshit) instead of owning it as a conscious decision they made. I personally would feel most betrayed by that kind of dishonesty.
