Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk is facing stinging criticism from Vivian Jenna Wilson, his estranged trans daughter, after he deadnamed her, claimed he was duped into agreeing to provide gender-affirming care, and said his child succumbed to what he described as “the woke mind virus.”
In a recent interview with Jordan Peterson of the Daily Wire, Musk said he was “tricked” into allowing his child, who is now 20, to receive puberty blockers. He proceeded to deadname and misgender Wilson, who told NBC News she has not spoken to her father in four years.
“I lost my son, essentially,” Musk said. “They call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. My son… is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Contrary to Musk’s false statement, deadnaming is known as referring to the name an individual used prior to coming out as trans.
“My son is dead, killed by the woke mind virus,” Musk said. “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”
A video clip of Musk’s interview was circulated on X by the anti-trans group Gays Against Groomers. Musk replied to the video with more insensitive remarks about Wilson.
Wilson, Musk said, “was born gay and slightly autistic,” which he said are “two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria” — again misrepresenting the reality.
“I knew that from when he was about 4 years old and he would pick out clothes for me to wear like a jacket and tell me it was ‘fabulous!’ As well as his love of musicals and theatre. But he was not a girl,” Musk said.
Wilson addressed Musk’s comments in a lengthy post on Threads, another social media platform. She described that story as “entirely fake.”
“Like, literally none of this ever happened,” Wilson said. “Ever. I don’t even know where he got this from. My best guess is that he went to the Milo Yiannopoulis school of gay stereotypes, just picked some at random and said ‘eh- good enough’ in a last-ditch attempt to garner sympathy points when he is so obviously in the wrong even in his own f—–g story.”
She added: “I did not have a ‘love of musicals & theatre’ when I was four, because y’know… I was f—–g four… I never picked out jackets for him to wear and I was most certainly not calling them ‘fabulous’ because literally what the f–k. I did not use the word fabulous when I was four because once again I would like to reiterate… I was four.”
Wilson said Musk was rarely around for her upbringing — and when he was around, she said she faced harassment for being feminine and queer.
“I was in fourth grade,” she recalled to NBC News. “We went on this road trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars — I don’t remember which one — and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” she said. “It was cruel.”
Musk’s social media platform, X, received an “F” grade from GLAAD in the latest Social Media Safety Index, which measures how platforms are upholding LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression. X has seen improvements in the last year, including reinstating a rule against misgendering and deadnaming individuals. By deadnaming his own child, though, Musk appeared to violate his own policy.
