T.I., Virginity, and the Ludicrousness of Soul Ties (Patreon)

You've probably noticed already, but I fell off with the podcast. Like an artist who prefers painting rather than drawing, or sculpting over pottery, podcasts just aren't my favorite medium. I spent months procrastinating recording the fourth episode of LexRated, and I've finally decided to just publish the script that I wrote back in November. This episode followed the LexRated video about the History of Virginity and the appalling news that T.I demands hymen tests for his daughter. 

Now let's get into the tea.  😈

In this episode, I’ll be discussing the relationship between soul ties, virginity, and rape culture. A lot of moments influenced the creation of this episode. I lost my own virginity at the age of 14 and I was super excited to do so— I called up a guy who I had met at a friends house and dry-humped and made out with, and told him I wanted him to be my first. I set the date for the first day of Thanksgiving break in 9th grade. It went perfectly, and I remember it fondly. I remember his first name, but I don’t remember his face, his dick, or his wack ass technique. If he were to walk past me on the street, I wouldn’t know him. To some dangerous people on the internet, a part of me lives inside of him, and a piece of him lives inside of me. Well, him and the dozens of other men and women I’ve had my fun with.

So there are two stories involving fathers that I’d like to tell to set the tone for this podcast before talking about soul ties. The first is obvious. If you’ve been on social media in the past week, you’ve definitely seen the viral and hotly debated news that rapper T.I. makes his 18-year-old daughter Deyja get virginity tests, and has been doing so for years. Here is the quote in full. 

“So it’s this one time we go, I think this might have been after her 16th birthday. This is what we do. Right after the birthday we celebrate,” he said. “Usually like the day after the party she’s enjoying her gifts. I put a sticky note on the door: ‘Gyno. Tomorrow. 9:30.’ So we’ll go and sit down and the doctor will come and talk and the doctor’s maintaining a high level of professionalism. He’s like, ‘You know sir, I have to, in order to share information’ — I’m like, ‘Deyjah they want you to sign this so we can share information. Is there anything you would not want me to know? See doc? No problem.’ And so then they come and say, ‘Well I just want you to know that there are other ways besides sex that the hymen can be broken like bike riding, athletics, horseback riding and just other forms of athletic physical activity.’ So I say, ‘Look doc, she don’t ride no horses, she don’t ride no bike, she don’t play no sports. Just check the hymen please and give me back my results expeditiously.'”

He then went on to explain that virgins arent fun and they’re “alot of work”, so men won’t want to date his daughter. At the time that this podcast was written, his daughter locked her instagram account because men were flooding her with comments about taking her virginity.

If you watched the Lex Rated minisode, A Short History of Virginity, you’d know that I JUST addressed the fact that virginity tests are highly inaccurate and traumatizing. I also addressed the superstitious obsessions cultures have had with virgins that have put young women in danger. Deyja publicly liked tweets that dragged T.I., and most of us believe this is her being in complete agreement with them. “According to a 2016 survey of 288 physicians, 10% responded that they had been asked by a parent or a family member to perform the two-finger test on a patient, and 34% said they had performed it themselves,” wrote  EJ Dickson for Rolling Stone.

I was completely shocked that T.I. would make this information public just when I was about to record this podcast, and it was honestly perfect timing. I, however, am not shocked that T.I. is so obsessed with his daughter’s virginity. Like most rappers, like most men with money, like most men invested in gender roles, T.I has always shown red flags of being the kind of father who thinks virginity tests are his sacred duty. For starters, he is a serial cheater who disrespects his partner, and when his wife Tiny was ONCE linked to another man, he went ballistic. Misogynists think cheating is a “man” thing, and hate women who cheat. Secondly, T.I. has further confirmed his misogyny by insisting that he’d never vote for a female president because they are too emotional. Thirdly, T.I. has implied that married women don’t have to consent to sex. In a podcast interview with his wife, he said, “I don’t give you nothing. See, you can’t be rationing out stuff, talking about what you’re going to give nobody because what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours. That means that little thing you got, that little sex box you got is half mine. So you pick which side you want, and that’s yours. The rest of it is mine. We can split it right down the middle of the…What do they call it? The, the, the, is it the, ‘Uvula’?”

Somebody please take the dick out this man’s mouth because he’s clearly been smoking it.

Lastly, if I had the time, I could list all of the T.I. lyrics that belittle women. So yes, for many of us, it was no surprise that TIP would be so low and disgusting to check his daughters virginity and brag about it. And of course, he’s aware and ok with the fact that his 15-year-old son is sexually active. That’s the first story. 

Now the second story is even more upsetting. It takes place in my 9th grade Spanish classroom. The teacher was out and we had a substitute. It was one of those substitute classes where there was no work getting done, just funny and sometimes lewd conversations, rapping freestyles, and snacks being shared. I forget how we arrived to the conversation that took place that day, but there were a group of us shooting the shits at our huddled desks. We were talking about virgins. It was one of those open, serious conversations kids have sometimes when the grownups aren’t listening.  All of us admitted to being virgins, except for one girl. Her name was an old woman’s name,  and I’ve remembered it since the 9th grade, despite the fact that I’ve forgotten hundreds of other people from childhood. I won't say her name, but I’ll call her something similar. Enid. Enid was a heavyset dark-skinned girl with gorgeous skin, and she always wore masculine clothing. She was on the band. She had cut marks on her arm, which is why she always wore long shirts. She told us she was not a virgin, and that the man who had taken her virginity was her father. She said he raped her. She was crying. Each of us was quiet. I’m sure there were disgusted looks. Nobody laughed. I don’t recall if I knew what the term “incest” was, but the first thing I thought was “well of course you’re still a virgin, if you were raped.” And so I said that. A few of the other girls agreed with me. She cried and shook her head and I remember we spent the rest of the period trying to convince her that she was still a virgin. 

To me, even at that young age with zero understanding of rape culture, I believed that your first sexual experience needed to be 100% consensual. But that didn’t mean I had a fully evolved view of virginity. For instance, I still saw it through a heteronormative lens. I was 14. By that time, I had been fingered, received oral sex, given oral sex to girls, had my breasts sucked, and done a lot of humping. I still considered myself a half virgin (though that would change over the upcoming Thanksgiving break, coincidentally). For a lesbian, being fingered and having oral sex could be considered virginity loss. But as for rape, I believed, and still believe, that it doesn’t count as your first true sexual experience. And while I agree that virginity itself is a dangerous social construct that harms women, I believe non-consensual sex cannot count as “losing your virginity”. If we must live in a culture where we idealize and commemorate the first time, then rape should not count. Your first time is your first consensual experience. My beliefs are not universal. 

Enid believed she was no longer a virgin. Numerous cultures throughout history have had protocols for raped girls being married to their rapists, to restore their sense of honor. 

So what does all of this have to do with soul ties? First, what are soul ties? The aggregated definition of soul ties are emotional bonds that form an attachment. To me, it sounds like a silly and superstitious way to explain human interactions, particularly sexual ones. Numerous Christian writers and folks in my twitter mentions have said that soul ties are not explicitly sexual, but in a society still obsessed with purity, it has become a new way to shame people, mostly women, who engage in casual sex. Because soul tie rhetoric is about emotions, and women are made out to be the illogical and emotional sex, it is clear that “soul tie” warnings target women.  Soul ties are based on a belief that you are “giving yourself” to a partner during sex. This is an understandable sentiment, as every sexual encounter requires some  level of trust. Trust that they’ll keep the condom on, trust that they’ll pull out, trust that she’s on birth control, trust that both people are tested and STD free, trust that he will pay her for her services when the sex is over, etc. But mutual trust is not “giving yourself” to a partner. You were a whole human being before the encounter, you are a whole human being after the encounter.

Soul ties are a religious idea for a few reasons. First, they are based on the belief that we have souls. Secondly, they are based on the belief that God should be your ultimate love and focus. As the Christian writers of Destinyimage.com explain, “We are created to need an intimate relationship with God and are truly fulfilled when we are in union with him. Any desire or love that hinders us from doing God’s will is an inordinate or lustful infliction.” They go on to make clear that you can have soul ties to items, places, and animals as well as people. So through this lens, a soul tie can be anything— a job, a car, a type of food, a hobby, a pet— that infringes on your ability to focus on God, that great big jealous entity in the sky. So off the bat, typical tweets warning about forming soul ties during sex, are regularly made by people who have close emotional bonds with items, places, and animals. They have taken soul ties and co-opted it for a reality where women are becoming increasingly unrepetant for having pre-marital and casual sex, or being sex workers. The highlighting of sexual activity simply reflects our obsession with purity and virginity. You won’t catch these same people claiming that there are social media sites, designer clothes, music, or other experiences and things lurking inside of our bodies. Nope, just the people we’ve banged.  With all of this in mind, can you even adopt soul tie rhetoric if you are an atheist? I say hell no, but maybe you can change my mind. 

I believe that soul ties are a way to avoid taking responsibility for accepting treatment you’ve identified as undesirable. For example, staying with a man who cheated on you because your two souls have been tied together through sexual activity is an excuse, a way to explain a lack of self-control. Soul Ties are also a coping mechanism for dealing with feelings of lust, or liking someone more than they like you. Because then you can just call them demonic and say they’re a succubus when all they did was bone you and not catch feelings. But my biggest problem with soul tie rhetoric is how it enables rape culture and abuse. As I’ve mentioned, many people believe vaginal penetration, no matter if its consensual or not, to count as a loss of virginity. Soul tie ideology tells survivors of sexual assault that a piece of their rapist lurks inside of them, that they are corrupted. If you have ever been raped, you know that it is a traumatic experience that evokes a loss of ownership over one’s body, a feeling of being violated. How can rape survivors ever heal if there are dangerous loons shouting in their ears that their soul is tethered to the soul of their rapist? 

Listen to this disturbing quote from one of the Christian sites I checked out for information about soul ties. “Sex is like gluing two pieces of wood together, and if done outside the context of marriage it’s like ripping them apart the next day. Of course, wood from the opposite board remains on each board.” If this is the kind of garbage being spoonfed to teens, especially in evangelical circles, it is no wonder why people wait so long to disclose sexual assault, if they ever do. Soul tie rhetoric seeks to establish a sense of shame in people, particularly women, who have casual sex, or have sex for money. This sense of shame is only magnified for rape victims. 

The last thing that I want to say is that soul tie rhetoric is really just an extension of body count rhetoric, where people place subjectively acceptable quotas on how many different people a person has experienced. I’m reminded of this when I see girls brag about keeping their body counts low. Even a self-proclaimed "Big Ol Freak" like Meg Thee Stallion has emphasized repeatedly how low her body count is, and how she re-fucks her exes to avoid getting too high a number.

Speaking of re-fucking exes, if sex is “giving yourself” to another person, and “giving yourself” to too many people makes you undesirable, the way you date is likely to be impacted. For heterosexual girls across the country who are told that they’re used up pieces of chewing gum if they have sex (seriously, tons of abstinence-only education courses use this metaphor), this can mean sticking with an abusive or destructive man because you believe you’re used up and won’t be able to find anybody else. These are the kind of notions T.I and other fathers like him are instilling in their daughters when they attempt to restrict their daughter’s sexuality by policing them with virginity tests. Can you be anti-rape culture and endorse soul tie rhetoric? The answer is NO.

There's a lot more to be said about virginity, specifically men and virginity. I look forward to addressing that in my upcoming video essay on Boosie and Rape Culture!