Vivian Jenna Wilson, daughter of Elon Musk, is letting him have it.
In a recent interview with NBC News, Wilson responds to her estranged father’s anti-trans rhetoric and claims that she and other trans youth were killed by the “woke mind virus” when coming out as trans and pursuing HRT. Through his social media platforms and in a recent livestream on the far-right platform The Daily Wire, Musk says he was “tricked” into co-signing documents with his ex-wife Justine Wilson, Vivian’s mother, that allowed Vivian to begin her medical transition when she was 16. Musk said that his daughter is “dead” and is “not a girl.”
Wilson, now 20, responded to these comments in her first interview. “I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson told 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.”
Unfortunately it is not unique for young trans people to be spoken about–even vilified–in the media for simply living their lives. What is unique is for a young trans person to have the opportunity to clap back through a large platform challenging the opposing transmisic party and their far reach, in this case, Elon Musk. So often we see transmisic online personalities spew their lies about trans life going unchallenged. Now we bear witness to Musk, one of richest men in the world and possibly one of the most notorious trans antagonists of the era, going up against his own daughter who he claims to love but has decided to publicly disparage to his millions of followers. For a young woman to go through this sort of open and overt cruelty by her father echoes the dire state of public discourse on trans lives. While memes of Musk’s embarrassing moments as a proud transphobe proliferate through both leftist and far right zeitgeists, at the end of the day, this is a man who refuses to accept his own daughter.
In the DailyWire+ livestream, Musk went on to say that he made a vow “to destroy the woke mind virus” after his daughter transitioned. “This was really before I had any understanding of what was going on, and we had COVID going on, so there was a lot of confusion,” Musk said. “I lost my son, essentially.”
Since acquiring Twitter in 2022 and renaming it “X,” Musk has launched an all-out hate campaign against the trans community through a series of transmisic tweets and a rollback of the platform’s protections for trans people, including a ban on using deadnames. “It’s called a deadname for a reason, because your son is dead,” Musk said.
Wilson clapped back saying, “He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects.” Musk and his daughter have been estranged for many years. According to Wilson, he was only present for “10 percent” of her life despite having half-custody over her and her five siblings. After asking Musk for months to sign the documents, Musk requested an in-person meeting with the two of them. At the time, Wilson was 16 and by California state law was required to have written consent by both parents. Musk reviewed the documents twice over and then signed the documents.
On Twitter, Musk continued to deadname his daughter and said she was “born gay and slightly autistic.” He stated that when Wilson was four years old she picked out clothing for him calling her choices “fabulous!” and had a love of musicals and theatre. Wilson called bullshit on all of that. She took to Threads and said all of those claims are “entirely fake.”
“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 fucking story,” Wilson posted on Threads.
She said Musk did not know what she was like as a child because “he quite simply wasn’t there.” During the little time they did spend together, she was harassed for femininity and queerness. In her NBC News interview, Wilson said the pandemic was her chance to escape Musk’s cruelty.
“When Covid hit, I was like, ‘I’m not going over there,’” she said. “It was basically very lucky timing.”
In a recent tweet, Grimes, Musk’s ex-wife and Wilson’s former stepmother, showed support for Wilson saying, “I love and am forever endlessly proud of Vivian.”
Wilson ended her Threads post clapping back haters one last time. “As for if I’m not a woman… sure, Jan. Whatever you say. I’m legally recognized as a woman in the state of California, and I don’t concern myself with the opinions of those who are below me.”
I keep forgetting to comment, but thanks for posting this – AS broke the news to me and I’m grateful I read it here first. Also, go Vivian!