Jul 26
Elon Musk's Trans Daughter Scoffs at His 'Nonsense' in Scorching Post
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 4 MIN.
Elon Musk was raked and roasted by his own daughter, Vivian Wilson, for the "nonsense" he posted about her, including claims that she was "slightly autistic" and that he knew she was gay when she was young. Musk also said that he had been deceived about allowing her medical treatments with puberty blockers to proceed – a claim Wilson flatly denied.
"I think he was under the assumption that I wasn't going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged," Wilson, 20, said in an interview with NBC News. "Which I'm not going to do, because if you're going to lie about me, like, blatantly, to an audience of millions, I'm not just gonna let that slide."
The interview and public comments from Wilson are striking because she has avoided the spotlight, only coming to public notice two years ago when she legally changed her name and declared that she no longer wanted "to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."
In tweeted and livestreamed comments, Musk misgendered and deadnamed his daughter, declared that she is "not a girl," and portrayed her in pathologizing terms, lamenting that his "son" had been "killed by the woke mind virus" and claiming that Wilson was "born gay and slightly autistic, two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria."
Musk further described scenarios in which Wilson, as a four-year-old, would help dress him up and would call the jackets she supposedly picked out for him "fabulous". He also claimed that Wilson had loved musical theater from an early age – all indications, Musk suggested, that told him she was gay.
But Wilson spoke out against the claims her father made, and dismissed his stories about her as a child as pure fabrication.
"There's a lot of stuff I need to debunk, but I want to start with what I find the funniest which is the notorious 'slightly autistic' tweet," Wilson posted at Threads, UK newspaper the Daily Mail relayed.
Threads is a rival social media platform that Facebook owner Meta launched after Musk's acquisition and re-branding of what once was Twitter.
"This is entirely fake," Wilson added in her Threads post, referring to the memories Musk claimed to have of her as a young child. "Like, literally none of this ever happened. Ever. I don't even know where he got this from."
Wilson derided the idea that she had loved musical theater as a young child, and wrote, "I never picked out jackets for him to wear and I was most certainly not calling them 'fabulous' because literally what the f***."
Added Wilson: "I did not use the word fabulous when I was four because once again I would like to reiterate...I was four."
Moreover, Wilson indicated that Musk wouldn't know what she had been like as a child because he wasn't much of a presence in her life – and when he was, she added, it wasn't a nurturing presence.
"He doesn't know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn't there," Wilson's Threads post said. "And in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness."
Calling Musk "cold" and "very quick to anger," Wilson dismissed him as "uncaring and narcississtic."
Far from a cozy scene in which the young Wilson shared a love of musical theater and lent her fashion sense to her father, NBC News reported, "Wilson said that, when she was a child, Musk would harass her for exhibiting feminine traits and pressure her to appear more masculine, including by pushing her to deepen her voice as early as elementary school."
"I was in fourth grade," Wilson recollected. "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.
"It was cruel."
As for Musk's claims about having been deceived about the permission he gave for Wilson to go on puberty blockers, "Wilson said that, in 2020, when she was still a minor at 16, she wanted to start treatment for severe gender dysphoria but needed the consent of both parents under California law," NBC News reported.
Musk was unwilling.
"I was trying to do this for months, but he said I had to go meet with him in person," Wilson recalled, adding, "At that point, it was very clear that we both had a very distinct disdain for each other."
"He was not by any means tricked," Wilson said, noting that Musk read the requisite forms himself and then again in her company.
Wilson was equally unimpressed by Musk's claim that a "woke mind virus" had "killed" his "son".
"They save lives. Let's not get that twisted," Wilson said of gender confirmation treatments like the ones she received as a minor. "They definitely allowed me to thrive."
Musk's comments and Wilson's unprecedented public comments in response are only the latest development in Musk's escalating attacks on transgender people, NBC News noted.
"In recent years, Musk has taken a hard-right turn into conservative politics and has been waging a campaign against transgender people and policies designed to support them," the news outlet described. "This month, he said he was pulling his businesses out of California to protest a new state law that bars schools from requiring that trans kids be outed to their parents."
Moreover, NBC News recalled, "After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, he rolled back the app's protections for trans people, including a ban on using deadnames."
Wilson summarized her feelings in a way that LGTBQ+ people, increasingly coming under social and political pressure to be less visible and less themselves, may sympathize with.
"I would like to emphasize one thing," NBC News quoted Wilson as declaring. "I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child.
"My life should be defined by my own choices."
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.