I Understand T.I.
The ripple effect of Toxic Masculinity, and how daughters, in particular, suffer from unresolved issues.

Allow me to first state that I, of course, completely disagree with people’s frantic policing of young women’s sexuality, making many feel as though their only value is their virginity and giving their sons the freedoms to do to their neighbors daughters what they wouldn’t want anyone doing to their own. He obviously treats his daughter like she’s his possession and not her own person, which is actually how many parents treat their children in general, but particularly it is how dads treat their daughters.
But, this is an article attempting to get deeper into the psyche of why some fathers, in particular, have this unhealthy and even rather misogynistic relationship with their daughters and not focusing so much on bashing him for his obvious dehumanizing attitudes towards women, so bear with me, some of you might get uncomfortable. This is my non-professional opinion as to what may be going on. As per usual, I am NOT referring to all fathers, really it is a small minority.
Children are often perceived as possessions. Their feelings, wants and desire merely second or even third to their owner’s whims.
In many ways, children are perceived as avatars of their parents. So, what is an avatar? Basically, an avatar is a representation of a human in a video game. You know, when you’re playing a game like sims and you get to choose the hair, skin color and gender of your character to represent you? That is an avatar.
This is part of the reason your mother, for example, won’t let you, her daughter, pursue computer engineering as a major because she wants you to be a nurse, because it’s more appropriate for a girl and she never got to do it so now, your life belongs to her.
Many fathers see both gendered children as representations of themselves. For men like T.I. for instance, his sons are supposed to be him — swinging that dick all around town, having this one for breakfast, that one for dinner and the other as a midnight snack, and definitely don’t forget about the side pieces. He is a ‘man’ and wants his sons to be free and adventurous and ‘conquer’ as much as he did — as disgusting as that may be to hear, that is what a lot of men who have little regard for women act like.
But, his daughter may also be a representation of him. Many men do not feel as though they have true, healthy and fulfilling relationships with women — some don’t even really feel connected to their own mothers. However, they may not realize this, as this is mostly subconscious. For many men, women (whether they consciously want this or not) fulfill one purpose… ‘the practical purpose’. It is clear, especially in the case of T.I., that he does not feel connected to women or the feminine within him.
I say this because, one can infer from the way he has treated women (from sleeping around with countless women before getting married… and even after marriage, which is a topic all on it’s own), and from the different way he wants his daughter to be treated, that he is conscious of how fundamentally disrespectful his behavior is to women.
He actively treats them as less than, so this is an indication of his own overall relationship with his own self, his disconnect from the feminine within him.
The lack of empathy. The lack of connection. The lack of love he feels towards women as a whole. Perceiving them more like pastries behind a counter, and not much beyond that. For so long, this has been his only way of relating to the opposite sex. Sleeping with them, then jumping out the window.
Let us try to go deeper. Emotions are an unsafe territory for many men. They can’t share them with their fathers, not only because many retort with statements along the lines of ‘men don’t have feelings’ but even the one’s that do attempt to provide a space for their young boys find themselves at a loss because, well, they themselves don’t know how. They themselves never had this space.
They can try to express their feelings to their male friends, but again, we find the same issue. Males who, all the while trying, fail at creating a nourishing, welcoming and loving environment for their brothers.
This, of course, damages them even when it comes to trying to relate to their female partners, but there can be issues on the woman’s side as well. They can try to express these said feelings to their girlfriends, but, there are in fact women who do take advantage of their vulnerability. There are also many women that pretend to be more sensitive than they really are, when in reality they want everyone else, most especially their male partner, to be sensitive to their feelings and not the other way around. Another downside of showing one’s belly to one’s female partner is that weakness is a great turn off to women, many men sense this (and many women admit to this in private).
No, of course feelings don’t have to be a sign a weakness. But there are times that a man simply wants to breakdown, because of how overwhelming life can be (in specific ways to men, actually), but then find themselves betrayed when their supposed partners react to this (perhaps not immediately, but eventually) with disgust and disdain.
In truth, within all humans there is a degree of feminine and masculine energy but these energies do not manifest in the healthiest ways within either gender. Part of developing a positive relationship with one’s inner feminine, for a man that is, is in having healthy and loving, non-sexual, relationship with women. And for this reason many daughters end up suffering due to unresolved internal issues on the part of their dads.
Now, allow me to reiterate, this is simply my opinion of what I believe is going on.
The daughter ends up fulfilling this subconscious function. And so, to many fathers part of what it means to have one’s daughter penetrated by a sleazy, dirty, man is being defiled by extension. This is the only part of himself that is ‘pure’, a side that had previously been buried and ignored. A side that he, and many other men, knew not how to even begin connecting themselves with. And so, to have a foreign body invade his newfound pure self is, well, slightly damaging at the least.
I can understand, for this reason, part of why men, like said rapper, almost frantically want to maintain their daughters virtue — it is their newly discovered virtue they want to preserve. They finally have a chance to actually relate to women beyond the mere physicality. The only females they can let their guards down with and allow themselves to explore the deeper most precious sides of themselves that are even unbeknownst to them. They can now let themselves be emotional and sensitive and vulnerable in a more comfortable and safe way.
But of course, instead of being aware of this — aware that truly what they need to do is connected themselves to their own inner femininity, aware that they need to start developing truly fulfilling, yet non-sexual, relationships with women in general, they mindlessly try to police their virginity to the detriment of all parties involved.
It is obvious that T.I. is not nearly as woke as he would have us believe. He is not for community. He is not for the fortification of society. If that were true, he would understand that protecting his own daughters hymen wouldn’t be enough. He himself would have to teach his own sons respect for women and to not hop over the fence to their neighbors homes and “defile” their daughters, and then proceed to pat them on the back like a coach would his star quarterback.
I mean, after all, it takes two to make a baby. Teen pregnancy is not just a risk for his own daughter. Losing “sexual market value” isn’t only an issue for his own daughter. Being “damaged goods” isn’t only an issue for his own daughter, but for EVERYONE else’s too. The man must know that in the back of his head, but can’t help but to high-five his young boys for yet another ‘hole-in-one’.
I may be able to empathize to some degree with the man, but there are clear inconsistencies that he must reconcile within his own self, especially if he wants to be the voice of a community not to mention have an actual healthy relationship with his daughter.
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