Elon Musk’s Trans Daughter Slams Him for Lies
Vivian Jenna Wilson, the billionaire's transgender child, claims her father blatantly lied about aspects of her life and transition.
Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, hit back at her father in an interview with NBC News, accusing him of being an absentee father who was cruel to her and of lying about aspects of her life in his public comments.
Musk recently appeared on conservative influencer Jordan Peterson’s podcast for an interview, blaming Wilson’s transition as one of the reasons that he has been vocal about his rejection of transgender identity and his opposition to what he calls “woke” culture.
In that interview, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who also owns the social media platform X, claimed that Wilson had been figuratively “killed” by deciding to transition, and that he had been “tricked” into agreeing to allow her to receive puberty blockers when she was 16 years old.
But Wilson, the daughter of Musk and his first wife, Justine, said that her father was not “tricked,” claiming that while he hesitated at first, he knew what he was agreeing to when he gave his consent for her to receive gender-affirming care, which she said was lifesaving for her, due to experiencing severe gender dysphoria.
Wilson told NBC News she took the consent forms to Musk in person — after months of pleading for him to agree to the treatments — and he read them at least twice before signing them.
She later continued her transition with hormone therapy, which she says “allowed me to thrive.”
Wilson said she had previously considered speaking out about Musk’s behavior as a parent and as a person, but had refrained from doing so. But after his interview with Peterson, she couldn’t remain silent anymore.
“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said. “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.”
Musk has spoken out against policies that acknowledge transgender identity as real. He has railed against the use of pronouns, promoted anti-trans content on X, and rolled back protections for trans people on the platform, including a ban on using deadnames.
He has even gone so far as to relocate his businesses from California to Texas in protest of a recently-signed law prohibiting teachers from forcibly “outing” transgender students to their parents.
Wilson criticized Musk and Peterson’s voiced skepticism around her feelings of dysphoria.
“I have been basically put into a point where, to a group of people, I have to basically prove whether or not I was suicidal or not to warrant medically transitioning,” she said. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling.”
She said, Musk — who has 12 children — was an absentee father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her twin brother to be raised by their mother or nannies — even though Musk gained joint custody of them following his divorce from Justine in 2008.
“He was there, I want to say, maybe 10% of the time. That’s generous,” she said. “He had half custody, and he fully was not there.”
Wilson added that Musk would frequently berate her for demonstrating stereotypically feminine behavior, even criticizing her for lacking a deeper, more masculine voice when she was in elementary school — well before puberty, which is typically when a male’s voice deepens.
“I was in fourth grade,” she recalled. “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.”
Wilson described her father as “cold,” adding, “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.”
Now a 20-year-old college student, Wilson — who has largely shunned the spotlight — told NBC News that she was surprised by the media attention she received in 2022 when she sought court approval in California to legally change her gender and her name, even adopting her mother’s maiden name in order to distance herself from her father.
She said hasn’t talked to her father in four years and has refused to be defined by him or his actions.
“I would like to emphasize one thing: I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child,” she said. “My life should be defined by my own choices.”
Wilson has taken issue with the way that Musk has characterized their relationship and her identity in his public comments. For instance, in a post on X, Musk claimed Wilson was “born gay and slightly autistic” and that, at age four, she fit certain gay stereotypes, such as loving musicals and using the exclamation “Fabulous!” to describe certain clothing.
Wilson has said that Musk’s alleged recollections of her childhood and his anecdotes about her behavior aren’t true.
“This is entirely fake. Like, literally none of this ever happened. Ever,” she wrote in a post on Threads. “I don’t even know where he got this from. 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.
“He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there,” she wrote in a follow-up post. “And in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness. Obviously he can’t say that, so I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype f*g-ing along to use at his discretion. I think that says a lot about how he views queer people and children in general.”
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