T.I. Checking Daughter's Hymen Controversy

Submission 16,522

Overview

T.I. Checking Daughter's Hymen Controversy refers to statements made by American rapper T.I. regarding his daughter's virginity on the Ladies Like Us in November 2019. T.I. revealed that he accompanies his daughter, Deyjah Harris to the gynecologist each year to see if her hymen is still intact. Many Twitter users spoke out against T.I.'s approach to his daughters sex-life saying it's an invasion of privacy and reinforces outdated notions of purity.

Background

On November 5th, 2019, Nazanin Mandi and Nadia Moham interview T.I. in their Ladies Like Us ^[1] podcast episode "Life Hacks." During the episode, T.I. was asked if he'd had the "sex talk with his daughter" 18 year-old Deyjah Harris to which he explained that he accompanies his daughter to the gynecologist to check if her hymen is still intact.^[2] On November 6th, Twitter user @race_jones^[4] tweeted a Madamenoire^[3] article on the matter with a short transcript of the conversation. The tweet garnered over 7,900 likes and 1,400 retweets in a day.

Twitter user @tyraerenee tweeted the audio from the podcast episode commenting "Literally cringed the whole time. And these women are sitting there laughing like it’s funny😕. TI says he goes to the gyne with his daughter every year😤" (since deleted). The tweet accumulated over 1,300 likes in a day. The podcast episode has since been deleted from iTunes. On November 6th, ChasinDatPaperTV uploaded the audio to YouTube (shown below). The video gained over 1,200 views in a day.

Notable Developments

On November 6th, 2019, Chrissy Teigen^[5] commented on the trending subject of T.I.'s statement made on the podcast. Teigen tweeted "def did not think we would be talking about hymens today. or TI" which received over 66,000 likes and 4,700 retweets in a day (shown below, left). That same day, Twitter user @yoyotrav^[6] posted a screenshot of Deyjah Harris' likes on Twitter saying, "If you were wondering how T.I.'s daughter, Deyjah, felt about the hymen-checking mess, her likes says it all:" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 60 likes and 40 retweets in a day. Planned Parenthood and the World Health Organization^[7] have called for the elimination of virginity testing. That same day Redditors began posting Buzzfeed^[2] and Madamenoire^[3] headlines to subreddits like r/iamatotalpieceofshit,^[8] r/hiphopheads^[10], r/trashy^[11] and r/notheonion.^[9] Most notably Redditor Lance_1997 post to r/trashy^[11] received over 27,800 points (93% upvoted) in a day.