Rape, circumcision and consent

Image – SWNS

In Manchester this year the man, above, was convicted of raping more than a hundred men. It is not at all surprising that he was sentenced to a long prison term.

Image – Alamy

Consent is the main issue with rape, there is nothing wrong with sex; if it is your choice to have intercourse. If you don’t consent to sex then it is rape. We don’t as a society say oh well men can’t get pregnant and we don’t say date rape is fine “he won’t remember it”. The courts quite rightly hand out severe sentences to those convicted of rape.

We should view male circumcision the same way. There is nothing wrong with circumcision if it is your choice. What is wrong is circumcising a child who lacks the capacity to understand the possible consequences or to give informed consent.

Is there a religious exemption?

There is no human right to impose your religion on another person. The human right to freedom of thought conscience and religion [17] is a qualified right in that you cannot use your right under that article to override the rights of any other person.

Whatever the claimed benefits, such as, he will want to look like his father, he will want to fit in with his peers, or community. All of these have to be weighed against the irreversibility of the procedure and the justifiable sense of loss after having had a normal body part removed.

There have been two studies in America, a commonly circumcising culture, that show between 10% [16] and 13% of men circumcised as children resent what was done to them.

In the light of these studies we should do more to protect children from all forms of non therapeutic genital cutting.

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