Moms are asking their infants for permission to pick them up — in order to combat ‘rape culture’

 New moms on Instagram have launched a new trend to combat “rape culture”: They are asking their infants for permission before picking them up.

According to Heat Street, the trend began last week after Nisha Moodley, mother of 6-month-old Raven, made an Instagram post featuring a selfie with her son and an explanation of her new parenting style, complete with a “endrapeculture” hashtag. Moodley claimed she can “feel for his ‘yes'” after she asks to hoist him up:

Since the moment he was born, we’ve always asked before we pick him up. I always feel for his “yes”. Why? Because we want him to know that his body is his, and that others’ bodies are theirs, and no one gets to make choices about someone else’s body. #lessonsinsovereignty #bornfree #endrapeculture Sidenote [sic]: If you ever want to hold someone else’s baby, my suggestion is to ask the parent, then ask the kid. It always touches my heart when someone takes a moment to connect with him and says “Can I hold you, dude?”

Moodley is not alone. Within the comments of Moodley’s post was Robin Weir, mother to a 7-month-old boy, who wrote, “We do this too … makes it feel more like we’re doing things ‘with’ him rather than ‘to’ him.”

As of this writing, the post has more than 600 “likes” and hundreds of comments. The post’s popularity was such that Yahoo Beauty interviewed Moodley about her parenting choice.

“I don’t ever want my son to be a sexual perpetrator or the victim of one, and the best thing I can do is honor his choices about his own body,” Moodley told Yahoo Beauty. “I also want him to pay attention to his instincts, and forcing physical touch could interfere with that.”

Moodley claimed that Raven will sometimes reject her when asked permission.

“There have been times where Raven has responded by reaching his arms out for a hug or turning his head or body away,” she said.

Yahoo News reported that “parenting expert” Sharon Silver said that Moodley’s parenting methods are correct.

“This idea is part of the wonderful [“Recourse of Infant Educarers”] (RIE) parenting philosophy, which is essentially respecting a child’s timetable and allowing him or her to participate in the full range of experiences as the result of a decision,” Silver told Yahoo Beauty. “It’s the underlying premise of positive parenting.”

According to the RIE website, the basic principles of RIE are to “not only respect babies,” but “demonstrate our respect every time we interact with them. Respecting a child means treating even the youngest infant as a unique human being, not as an object.”