Recently Justin Bieber made a rant on Snapchat where he talked about selfie etiquette.  In the video he is in the back of a moving vehicle and he is lamenting (sounding quite weary) about the behaviour of his friends asking for personal pictures with him.

"the way you ask or approach me when you want a photo with me is going determine if I take a photo or not."

"If I’m walking somewhere or arriving somewhere and you guys are asking me to take a photo, if I don’t respond, if I continue to keep walking, the likelihood is that I probably don’t want to take a photo at that moment," Bieber tells his fans in the clips. "If you start screaming louder that’s not going to make me want to take a photo more.”

"He continued by saying, "Usually the chances are I’ll take a photo but if perhaps I don’t...please just respect me and just treat me the way you want to be treated."

Wow.  How -dare- he ask for a bit of space and respect for his privacy? The cunt.  Doesn't he know we own him and his time?  J/K.  I can't even joke about that without hating myself a little.

Then the internet promptly lost its shit, decrying Bieber as full of himself if he thinks people want to be around him so much (uh, but they literally do.  That's like...a thing.)

In a news show that I watch daily, The Young Turks, Hannah Cranston criticised Bieber for being "ungrateful" and not having more appreciation for the adoration of his fans when they chase him down the street berating and screaming at him for a photo.

And therein lies the problem.  What Justin Bieber is experiencing is street harassment.  But let's look at street harassment in a slightly different way and I'll see if I can drive the point home...  Have a look at this comic by You're Doing It Wrong by Stevie Wilson where she runs through her internal thought process on street harassment.

The full comic can be viewed here and I highly recommend her work - but this image is the point I want you to focus on.  Robot Hugs - another comic I love intensely - put it really well here as well.

This is a problem of entitlement.  It's about Bieber's fans not only finding him on the street and then feeling entitled to his presence and his attention because they came to see him - his fans actively hunt him down.  After hunting him down and finding him, they appear at his side demanding a photo and a cuddle.  If he's not willing to give it, they scream - he gets abused.  How dare he not give them the attention they're entitled to? How dare he believe that he has a right to privacy? He's a celebrity? We OWN him (*cough*WomenInMen'sSpacesMuch?*cough*)!!  If he didn't want our attention he shouldn't be walking out in public without a disguise! He shouldn't have decided to be famous! He's asking for it.

And when you look at the Snapchat - when you read his words, literally all he is asking for is respect for his personal space.  All he's saying is, "You're not entitled to my time." and he's absolutely 100% correct.  

When you buy his album and listen to it - you are entitled to that.

When you turn up at a concert of his - you are entitled to a performance or a refund of your ticket price if something goes wrong.

But when he (or anyone else) is walking down the street in their private time and you run up to them and begin harassing them - you aren't entitled to shit.  

When you hunt down your doctor and follow him around after business hours demanding he give you an exam during his time off because you paid for his services once - we call that stalking.

You are no more entitled to that selfie from Justin Bieber than you are to a date or a smile from the woman you shouted at.  And when we apply two completely different standards to a man and a woman (Justin Bieber needs to shut up and take a compliment but women being harassed on the street is a problem) - that, my darlings, that's sexism and it's disgusting no matter which gender you perpetuate it against.

I see a lot of people on the internet commenting on the letter that little Sophia Cruz wrote and gave to the pope, fearful that her parents were going to be deported.

The vast majority of the comments go something along the lines of, "Her parents obviously wrote that for her."

And that is -so gross-. It implies several things, two of them more glaring. That Sophia Cruz is incapable of such a well formed idea and that her parents are deliberately deceptive. The first idea feeds the second and is -incredibly-, -blatantly-. -wrong-.

While it's entirely possible that Sophie Cruz herself is incapable of such a well formed idea - to think that 5 year olds in general are - is just ignorant.

I know this for -absolute fact-, because I am a mother of a 5 year old -just like that-. I am the mother of a 5 year old with big, well formed ideas about what is right and wrong, a 5 year old who worries about the big things in the world - wars, famine, poverty, cruelty. I have a 5 year old who sees news reports of police killing unarmed civilians and comes to me with concerns about whether or not his family are safe from the police. I have a 5 year old who told me that he thinks we should eat less meat because it's unhealthy too eat too much meat AND because it's unethical to kill so many animals just for one family.

Do you know what happens when we look at a child and invalidate their big ideas? -We discourage them from having them-. Instead of saying, "Damn that little girl is one smart cookie - continue with your amazing parenting!!" we shut down Sophie Cruz and say she is incapable of her own work.

If you want a real idea of Sophie Cruz's mind, look at her artwork. It's -extremely advanced- for a 5 year old. She obviously has excellent fine motor control for her age and the detail in her drawings puts that art skill at -at least- 9 years old if not more advanced (my son's drawing skill is that of an 8 year old and he's nowhere near this level of detail).

Sophie Cruz's drawing.  It reads: "My friends and I love each other no matter our skin color."
(Arelis Hernandez/ The Washington Post)

I don't doubt for a moment that Sophie Cruz absolutely came up with that idea on her own. I don't doubt for a moment that she was genuinely terrified and encouraged by her parents to express her idea and share it with the Pope (because I know that I would do -exactly the same thing-.).

I find myself reminded of a time when female writers had to pretend to be men even to have their ideas taken seriously. Why? Because they were just feeble-minded women who couldn't come up with anything worth listening to. It discouraged generations of women from making their voices heard. Why should they bother? No one was listening.

We engage in the same invalidating behaviour with children. When they come up with a big idea that is profound to us - we come back insulting them that they must have taken the idea from someone else.

Why? Because we feel intimidated by the intellectual prowess of a little girl? Because we ourselves are nothing like as brave as a tiny child? Because she is being -listened to- while our adult voices are currently silenced by location or circumstance? Are we really tearing children down over what gets down to little more than jealousy?

I understand -a lot- about human behaviour, and why people do the things that they do has -always- fascinated me. One thing I have consistently failed to understand, however - is the human need to constantly put children in their place and to bind them intellectually.

"Shut up you with your big ideas. Go back and play in the dirt where kids belong. No one asked you. Children should only speak when spoken to."

It's their world. We're only taking care of it until they're ready. Children are born without sexism, without racism, without hatred and rage in their tiny hearts. We should listen to them -more-, not -less-.

My blog post reminded me of another thing a lot of kids just don't get because they weren't taught to look for it.  I was reminded of the trend last year of young, well-meaning women holding up "I don't need feminism because I clearly don't get it" signs.  

I certainly can't speak for all of those young women - but I can be sure that a lot of them didn't think they needed feminism because they didn't grow up with the constant reminder of "what sexism is".  I know that I didn't.  When I was a teenager I thought I didn't need feminism because I saw feminism as "man hating".  Like many people, I mistook "feminism" for "misandry" and my mom was the kind of woman who threw other women under the bus with "she was dressed like a whore and asking for it" comments.  I won't make the same mistake with my own child.  My 5 year old already knows that the world is slanted to favour him and he's angry about it.  That's the kind of kid I want to raise.