Earlier this month, rapper T.I. who most of us had largely forgotten about, became international news after he went on a podcast and said (half jokingly) that he took his daughter for regular hymen exams. Understandably, the world went wild. Gloria Steinem wayed in. Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too movement, commented. His daughter, Deyjah stayed silent (though liked tweets calling him controlling and abusive).
And yet through it all, T.I himself stayed silent. And now we know why. He’s chosen the Smith family friend public apology method du jour. Just like Jordyn Woods and her famous apology polo neck, T.I. is going to the Red Table, ostensibly to set the record straight.
First things first. Jada, who you might expect to be a formidable opponent, gives T.I. (who they call Tip) and his wife big hugs. (NB. Tiny, who comes to the interview with TI, is not Deyjah Harris' mother, but her stepmother). Will comes in and does the same. It’s like a family reunion. Eventually they settle around the red table and it becomes clear that Willow isn’t there. Disappointing, seeing as she would have shish kabobed Tip.
So, Jada and Gammy start calmly asking T.I. about his comments about his daughter’s hymen. T.I. does not seem embarrassed. He is not, he makes clear, sorry for what happened, apart from the fact that he embarrassed his daughter. He says the words ‘I’m here to learn from you’ to the women he is sitting with and you can hear feminists all over the world screaming into their pillows.
So, what did he actually use the interview to say?
He feels it is his responsibility to protect his daughter from being ‘defiled’ by ‘slimey grimey chubby fingered boys.
This from the man who, in 2013, rapped ‘So, hit me up when you pass through
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two.’
He explained: ‘I’m talking about all the slimey, grimey chubby-fingered little boys who want to come in and defile, and destroy the sanctity that I have…I don’t understand anything that is the most important thing in my life, I am going to deal with that with very extreme care… ...I don’t understand how that is looked at as being so wrong.’
T.I., if you’re reading this, it’s so wrong because you seem to believe that your daughter’s value is synonymous with her lack of sexual experience. That’s messed up.
As a viewer you are BEGGING Jada or Gammy to ask why, given that T.I. seems to have spent much of his time 'defiling' the bodies of other women, it was okay when he did it . But no-one does.
He doesn’t see a problem with being ‘controlling’
T.I. told the Red Table: ‘For there to be malice, there must be ill intent. If I’m going to the doctor with you just for the sake of controlling you, then ok. But if I’m going for the purpose of being a protective parent, and there’s no such thing as overprotective. There’s protective and unprotective.’
No, we don’t think that makes sense either.
He’s unclear on where fathers stand in 2019.
In what starts as quite an interesting question and takes a rapid nose dive, he says: ‘I want to know, what is the purpose and place of a father in this society?' he says. 'Because a father like myself, who wants to be as involved and as attentive as possible, we could draw the conclusion of, we just donate sperm and come pay for things and we don't have no say-so in how things are handled.'
He sees his son’s sexuality as different ball from his daughter’s.
Apparently because if his son gets a girl pregnant, it doesn’t ‘affect his household immediately’ whereas, ‘...if my daughter comes home [pregnant], my household changes immediately. [...] the stakes are higher’.
Right.
And finally, T.I. thinks that your childhood ends when you have sex for the first time.
[When you have sex for the first time] you’ve ended your childhood, and it’s time to begin adulthood.’
So if you went all the way with your boyfriend the summer you finished your GCSEs then you should have had a pension plan and Volvo because that was the day your adulthood began. That’s you told.
T.I.’s daughter Deyjah, the most important figure in this entire conversation, deleted all of her social media after it was noticed that she was liking tweets calling her father controlling (which did not come up during the interview) so we’ve got no idea what she thinks about her father and stepmother going on the show to discuss hymen-gate - though her mother posted some cryptic Instagram stories when it was aired.
It’s increasingly clear that Deyjah’s voice - the most valuable one in the entire discussion - is the one which is most noticeably missing.