On X after the interview, Musk stated that his baby was born “homosexual and barely autistic” and claimed these traits “contribute to gender dysphoria.” Wilson shot again quickly after on Threads, dismissing her father’s characterization of her childhood as “solely pretend.” She criticized him for peddling dangerous stereotypes about trans and queer individuals in “an try to garner sympathy factors.”
“He doesn’t know what I used to be like as a baby as a result of he fairly merely wasn’t there,” the 20-year-old stated in a single publish. And when her father was current, Wilson stated, he “relentlessly harassed” her for her “femininity and queerness.”
Washington Put up reporters referred to as and texted a cellphone quantity for Wilson however didn’t get a response. Musk didn’t reply to emailed requests for remark from The Put up.
The dispute marks a uncommon public spat between Wilson and Musk, whose frustrations over her transition have been central to his well-documented rightward political shift. Lately, Musk has been embraced by outstanding conservatives comparable to Tucker Carlson, spoken out towards company range initiatives and amplified right-wing commentators on social media.
That political shift apparently cemented this month, when Musk endorsed former president Donald Trump within the 2024 election.
On X, the social media platform he owns, he has decried gender pronouns with statements which have drawn backlash, even from these near him.
“I completely help trans, however all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare,” Musk wrote in late 2020. In response to a tweet earlier that yr the place he wrote “Pronouns suck,” he was admonished by his then-partner Grimes, who requested him to cease and stated she couldn’t “help hate,” information retailers reported.
Within the Peterson interview, Musk characterised the gender-affirming therapies that Wilson obtained, together with puberty blockers, as “baby mutilation and sterilization.”
Musk additionally instructed Peterson that allowing youngsters to alter their gender id is “extremely evil” and that those that advocate for gender-affirming take care of younger individuals “ought to go to jail.”
Vivian is one in all six youngsters that the billionaire has had with Justine Wilson, a author. He additionally has three youngsters with Grimes, a musician, and three youngsters with Shivon Zilis, an government at Musk’s Neuralink firm.
Many states have banned gender-affirming take care of transgender minors. A majority of Individuals oppose puberty-blocking drugs and hormonal therapies for trans youngsters, in accordance with a Washington Put up-KFF ballot, though the American Psychological Affiliation has stated the flexibility to entry such therapies improves the general well-being of these youths.
Puberty blockers forestall the discharge of intercourse hormones. As soon as a affected person stops taking blockers, their physique instantly returns to producing its natal hormones.
Though Musk used the time period “sterilization,” docs who deal with trans sufferers say puberty blockers alone don’t trigger infertility. Puberty blockers have been used for years on youngsters who expertise precocious puberty, and they’re “reversible it doesn’t matter what,” stated Marci Bowers, one of many nation’s preeminent gender transition surgeons and the president of the World Skilled Affiliation for Transgender Well being.
However a affected person’s outcomes will differ based mostly on once they begin on the blockers, whether or not they take cross-sex hormones and the way lengthy they continue to be on the treatment.
After the Peterson interview, Musk was criticized for “deadnaming” his baby — referring to her by her delivery title and gender. Others’ refusal to make use of pronouns that trans- and gender-expansive youths use is a standard, devastating downside for them, in accordance with the Human Rights Marketing campaign, which says that half of these youths say their household “by no means” refers to them with correct pronouns.
Musk was criticized by LGBTQ+ advocates this yr after he stated that “cis” and “cisgender” could be handled as slurs on X. Final yr, he defended a coverage that allowed customers to misgender individuals on the platform as a matter of “free speech.”
LBGTQ+ youth are being negatively affected by “hostile political rhetoric that always targets them, together with from high-profile figures like Elon Musk,” stated Jared Todd, senior press secretary for the Human Rights Marketing campaign.
“In a world the place Musk may use his public standing for good, he chooses to make use of trans youth as a scapegoat,” Todd stated Friday in an emailed assertion to The Put up. “It’s each unhappy and unsurprising given his historical past.”
Lately, Todd stated, the HRC has referred to as out Musk for insurance policies which have made X “a spot the place dangerous rhetoric and bullying can unfold unchecked.” He cited Musk’s latest resolution to maneuver the headquarters of SpaceX and X away from California in protest of a brand new state legislation barring college districts from requiring mother and father to be notified of a kid’s change in gender id.
“Musk’s ignorant and inflammatory views on the trans neighborhood — even his personal daughter — are out-of-step with these of a majority of Individuals, and a everlasting stain on his character and repute,” Todd stated.
Wilson and Musk have been distant for a while, Wilson instructed NBC on Thursday in her first public interview. She formally severed ties with the billionaire greater than two years in the past.
“I not stay with or want to be associated to my organic father in any approach, form or type,” Wilson said in a petition filed with California Superior Court docket in April 2022, when she sought to formally change her title.
Wilson’s pushback towards her father has garnered help on-line, together with from Grimes, the musician who has youngsters with the Tesla CEO.
“I like and am perpetually endlessly happy with Vivian,” Grimes stated Thursday in an X publish.
