Offered without comment.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his estranged transgender daughter was “killed” by the “woke mind virus” after he was tricked into agreeing to gender-affirming care procedures.
In an interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Dr. Jordan Peterson, the X owner called gender-reassignment surgery “child mutilation and sterilization.” He then discussed his 20-year-old child Vivian Jenna Wilson, who he said underwent the procedures during the pandemic.
“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys,” Musk told Peterson in a Daily Wire interview during which he referred to his child by their deadname. “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 and I was told (Musk’s child) might commit suicide.”
The SpaceX founder claimed the process is done to children “who are far below the age of consent” and said he agreed with Peterson’s belief that anyone who promotes the practice should go to prison.
“I was tricked into doing this,” Musk said. “I lost my son, essentially. They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead.”
Musk went on to say that the experience set him on a mission.
“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that,” Musk said. “And we’re making some progress.”
The Tesla founder fathered his children with three different women over two decades. His first child was born in 2002 and his most recent baby was born in early 2024.
Musk welcomed his first six kids with his ex-wife, Justine Wilson, between 2002 and 2006. In the years that followed, he welcomed children with singer-songwriter Grimes and Neuralink Corp.’s director Shivon Zilis.
The arrival of Musk’s 12th child was confirmed in June 2024; the SpaceX CEO revealed that he and Zilis welcomed the new baby earlier in the year, but said he didn’t “secretly” father the child.
Over the years, Musk and his partners have requested privacy for their children amid speculation about the unusual arrangement. In September 2023, Grimes posted on X (formerly Twitter) in September 2023 in an attempt to “de-escalate the narrative” after she and the entrepreneur welcomed their third baby together soon after Musk welcomed children with Zilis.
UPDATE:
Welp, hold the phone –
Who knows exactly what’s going on with another person’s mind, but I think it largely began with Covid. Musk freaked out about the lockdowns, and largely began his red-pilling adventure about then:
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tweets-take-the-red-pill-what-it-means-2020-5
Other regulations in California also probably helped nudge him to the right as well. It’s generally not uncommon that a person becomes more conservative as their wealth increases.
With ‘red-pilling’, the people that always get it the worst are the ones who think they’re the smartest person in the room. They selectively find the ‘evidence’ for whatever they are already leaning towards believing, and run with it like zealots. Covid drove a bunch of people in this direction, fueled by the loudest and most obnoxious on social media. It’s unlikely Musk would have bought Twitter if he wasn’t obsessed with it.
Socially, the basic mechanics are if a person starts leaning in one direction and is vocal about it, they’ll get pushback from people with opposing viewpoints. For many to most people, the natural reaction to that will be to double down and lean further in the direction they were already headed. Continue that process, and it’s a feedback loop.
It’s highly dangerous politically, as it further divides a country or group, and can lead to greater and greater extremes.
Sorry, but Musk has a point to make here. Europe has a far different take on what is medically suitable wrt gender therapy than the US. The revised edition of the Cass report has been published, and it casts doubt on much of the claims of the vociferous woke left which is promoting some very dubious medical claims about gender therapy, including the one which influenced Musk – that his son might well commit suicide.
This arena should be tackled with medical science, not political idealism.
What do you mean by “woke”?
you know.
“Woke”.
Like, as in the Fox News usage – it means anything or anyone you hate. All purpose, meaningless, trigger language.
The reference to the final decision to move both SpaceX and X out of California was AB1955. Where does the article say this? That legislation legalizes and imposes policy for schools and teachers to keep ‘gender’ information about kids from their parents unless they receive written permission by the child granting consent while, at the same time, keeping records sent home to be done in original designations (things like sex and name, specifically hiding gender identity changes, specifically omitting medical actions carried out by school staff if it involves ‘gender’ care, and so on).
So yes, it was the final straw for Musk who accused the state of trying to take possession of children. This law is a groomer’s wet dream, where they teach about gender under the the ‘bullying’ policy so that parents cannot opt their kids out nor raise any concerns about its negative effects. This gender identity ideology is now taught in California starting in kindergarten through to grade 12. Any parent should be up in arms over this hostile takeover of parenting by the state on this issue when those kids are in school.
But please – please – notice how Musk’s reaction to this new law is spun to try to paint him in the most negative way possible as some kind of right wing crazy rather than deal with the issues caused with AB1955 and the very legitimate concern raised by parents about this new law. Musk’s negative experience with having a child be indoctrinated into gender ideology and chemically altered without the slightest medical concern or oversight of long term consequences is shared by literally thousands of parents and siblings and detransitioners… all of whose voices are similarly waved away and vilified because each and every one of them is painted in the same negative way… and then forwarded by sites that think this is legitimate criticism when in fact it’s a con job being carried out by ideologues and promoted by those who assume it’s virtuous to do so.
AB1955 text: “This bill would prohibit school districts…[etc] from… enforcing any… regulation that requires an employee… to disclose any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation…[or] gender identity… to any other person without the pupil’s consent…”
It’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ for teachers. By my reading, that’s ALL it is. Teachers get to say “don’t ask me because I’m only a teacher and don’t actually want to know about your kids gender preferences”.
If parents want teachers to tell them their kids gender preferences: those aren’t parents, those are genetically similar adults posing as parents. I mean, come on, if anyone should know, it would be the kids parent.
Musk moved SpaceX and X out of California and into Texas over California’s right to let teachers just be teachers. In this, Musk made two loud claims:
1) I want my kids teachers to be snitches, and tell me what my 12 kids are actually doing as they live the lives that I wish I had time to connect with. But, you know, I can’t cuz I’m rich, and have too many kids to count anymore.
2) If you work for me, you are my slaves. I will move you and your family across the World, if it suits me, at a whim (because if anything qualifies as a ‘whim’ this is it). And then I’ll move you back again, if it suits me. All you engineers trained in rocketry in Southern California, by their excellent schools there, with deep roots in the area, with families and friends in the area: you are my biotches now, and I’ll treat you like I would a dog. Cuz I’m rich.
The GOP says it hates the ‘Nanny State’, yet here is Elon Musk, newly-minted Conservative, literally complaining that his teachers aren’t sufficiently behaving like Nannies!!
Someone close to me teaches in California: 30 students. She can’t be a Nanny, she can hardly be a teacher, teaching the 3 R’s. Don’t ask teachers to understand or even CARE about your ‘precious nothings’ gender status: they are overwhelmed just doing what we already asked them to do.
If you don’t already know your ‘precious nothings’ gender status, then you are no kind of parent. And I say that with otherwise deep respect for Elon Musk as an engineer.
Some people like to place the blame squarely on teachers, or books, then try to control or ban them. But anyone with any memory of what life was like in school knows that a lot of information, and misinformation, comes from other students. To label the problem as “woke” makes it appear to be a black-n-white thing when in reality, it is a thousand shades of gray thing.
The legislation insists that teachers lie to parents and maintain the deception, but only when it comes to
‘gender’. Strange, that, don’t you think?
As a teacher, I know this mandated approach is both unethical and counter to best practices and intentionally creates a division between schooling and parents based on the assumption that parents are neither as capable nor caring as educational ideologues in this one matter. Strange, don’t you think?
And so parents are ones who should be kept in the dark and this legislation legalizes it. But let’s be clear: in all other arenas of schooling, best practices overwhelming demonstrate the advantages and positive outcomes with parental involvement. So teachers are ethically bound to seek involvement and respect parents even when they personally disagree with actions or motivations, of course.
So this exception should not only raise the red flags of warning that something else is going on here than education and best practices. As an outlier of practices, this new legislation should be subjected to increased scrutiny and a much higher bar for positive results. But I think it’s pretty clear that something else IS going on here: it’s called ideological indoctrination that has absolutely nothing to do with basic education and everything to do with an activist social agenda.
So you think that, if one of your students is too scared to come out to their parents about their sexuality, it’s your job to tell the parents? It’s *your* job to betray that kid’s trust in you and potentially expose them to emotional or even physical abuse from their parents? Do you think the kid doesn’t have a reason for not wanting to be out at home? Why is it your job to snitch on them? Do you also call the parents up because the kid is wearing clothes you don’t like? If they’re “just” gay?
You are complaining about forcing “teachers lie to parents and maintain the deception”. That’s not in the text of the legislation above. You are not allowed to disclose sexual orientation WITHOUT THE STUDENT’S PERMISSION. If the kid says OK, go to town. But what the hell kind of student meetings are you having if you feel a need to announce the student’s sexual orientation?
If you are whining about having to lie about it to their face if the parent’s ask, no one is forcing you to do it. You can just say that you are not allowed to discuss such matters without the permission of the student. And then the parents can go home and have a conversation WITH THEIR CHILD. What a concept! I get how you would much rather force everyone else to live the way you want them to because you are clearly in the party of “FREEDOM!!! As long as you express your freedom in my way.” Ugh.
No, it’s called protecting human rights.
For anyone concerned about what’s going on with families caught up in this ideological social landscape, one could do worse that read the personal tragedies posted by PITT (Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans at https://www.pittparents.com/). Musk’s experience and anger at the abuse mirrors that of thousands of parents and families left out of the indoctrination matrix of real harm to real people in real life. So the very real effort put into vilifying him in this matter becomes glaringly obvious to those informed about the matter.
So why is he abusing his daughter all over the Internet? She’s 20 years old. She is happy with her choices. Musk’s experience and anger reflect his intolerance and inability to love his children unconditionally.