Elon Musk Says “Woke Mind Virus” “Killed” His Trans Child
On a podcast, Musk misgenders his trans daughter, claiming he was "tricked" into permitting her to receive puberty blockers.
Billionaire Elon Musk said his estranged transgender daughter was figuratively “killed” after she received gender-affirming care, prompting him to adopt gender-skeptic and anti-transgender views.
The CEO of Tesla and Space X, and owner of X, was speaking with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson as part of a podcast interview.
Peterson asserted that psychiatrists encouraging minors to transition were “contemptible cowards,” comparing them to “the Nazis.”
Musk agreed, saying that California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stance on transgender issues, including his decision to sign a bill into law preventing school officials from “outing” trans youth to their parents, was part of the reason he was relocating his company headquarters from California to Texas.
“So-called gender-affirming care is a terrible euphemism, that’s for sure,” Musk said. “It’s child mutilation and sterilization under the guise of gender-affirming care.
“It’s evil. I mean, you’re taking kids who are obviously often far below the age of consent — almost every child goes through some kind of identity crisis, it’s just part of growing up — so it’s very possible for adults to manipulate children who have are having a natural identity crisis into believing that they are the wrong gender and that they need to be the other gender.
“We have an age of consent for a reason,” he continued. “The reason you can’t get, say, tattoos below age 18 or drink or drive, and there are ages at which you can do things, is because if we allow children to take permanent actions when they’re 10, 12, 14 years old, they will do things that they subsequently greatly regret.”
Peterson asked Musk why he was focused on this issue, to which the billionaire replied that his view was influenced by his own experience dealing with a child who came out as transgender as a teen.
“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys,” Musk said, misgendering his 20-year-old daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson. “This was before I had any understanding of what was going on. We had COVID going on, so there was a lot of confusion. And I was told [my child] might commit suicide,” he said before Peterson interrupted him to offer his own opinions on the topic.
Musk added he believed that the trend of psychiatrists encouraging transgender youth to transition was “incredibly evil,” adding that he believes people who promote the idea of gender transition “should go to prison.”
“I was tricked into doing this. It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs,” Musk said. “And so, I lost my son essentially. They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead. So my son…is dead. Killed by the woke mind virus.”
Musk added that his daughter’s transition — and the unraveling of their relationship — led him to vow “to destroy the woke mind virus” — a phrase he uses to reference political correctness and the ideological beliefs of leftists — in part, by taking over Twitter, which he later rebranded as X.
On X, Musk has made various posts attacking the idea of transgender identity and decrying so-called “woke” ideology. Some LGBTQ advocates have even accused him of censoring LGBTQ-related posts or material, including removing LGBTQ-themed profiles from the social media platform.
Vivian Jenna Wilson is the child of Musk and his first wife, Justine Wilson. She legally changed her name and the gender marker on her identity documents in June 2022 after transitioning, adopting her mother’s maiden name as her last name.
“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form,” she said at the time.
Musk biographer Walter Isaacson wrote in the biography Elon Musk that the tech mogul has blamed his lack of a relationship with his daughter on her progressive school in Los Angeles.
According to Isaacson, that estrangement was the driving force behind Musk’s “anti-woke sentiments.”
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