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Whatever You Like rapper T.I faced monumental backlash in the last week for admitting he accompanies his 18-year-old daughter to her annual gynaecology appointments to make sure that she is still a virgin.
T.I, whose real name is Clifford Joseph Harris Jr asks his daughter, Deyjah Harris’ doctor to check that she isn’t sexually active by seeing if her hymen is still intact.
Deyjah unfollowed her father on social media after he announced how he keeps tabs on her sexual activity. Since the incident, Deyjah also liked tweets that call T.I “disgusting, possessive and controlling.”
The rapper has yet to defend himself since making the comments on the Apple podcast Ladies Like Us hosted by Nadia Moham and Nazanin Mandi. The controversial episode has been removed after the intense backlash and numerous one-star reviews.
Moham and Mandi expressed their regret for laughing at T.I’s comments and letting them go unchallenged. They said in an Instagram apology that laughing was just a “knee- jerk reaction” and that they don’t agree with virginity testing. They also said, “We support and love women and feel that their bodies are theirs to do as they wish.”
Virginity testing is a practice that has been widely condemned by medical professionals across the world. According to the World Health Organisation, virginity testing is “medically unnecessary and often times painful, humiliating and traumatic.”
The practice is often performed by inserting fingers into the vagina and inspecting the size of the hymen’s opening or for tears in the hymen. There is no medical evidence that checking the hymen actually proves whether a woman is a virgin or not.
The hymen is a thin piece of tissue that surrounds or only partially covers the external vaginal opening. It has no proven purpose and just like each girl’s vagina, hymens come in all different shapes and sizes.
There is a common misconception that the hymen only tears or is broken the first time a woman has sex. This couldn’t be further from the truth; the hymen can break for many different reasons.
But as the years pass, most hymenal tissue thins and the opening widens. Activities such as horseback riding, gymnastics and cycling can all stretch, tear or break your hymen. Other things like using a tampon, masturbation and falling hard on objects can also tear your hymen. If this did not occur, women could not menstruate.
Usually female babies are born with membranes surrounding their vaginal openings. However, some women are born without a hymen at all. Due to this it is impossible to tell if a girl is a virgin by checking her hymen which makes virginity testing utterly useless.
United Nation agencies have previously denounced virginity testing as a violation of the rights of women and girls and have said that they reinforce stereotyped notions of female sexuality and gender inequality.