Elon Musk’s transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, is speaking out after her father said she was “killed by the woke mind virus.” In her first interview, the 20-year-old has described the billionaire as a cruel absentee parent.
“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.”
Wilson, who legally filed to change her name and gender when she turned 18 in 2022, revealed that she’s not spoken to the Tesla CEO in nearly four years—but even growing up, she alleged that he was rarely present and described his demeanor as “cold.”
“He was there, I want to say, maybe 10% of the time. That’s generous,” she said, adding that during these periods, he’d pressure her to appear more masculine
“I was in fourth grade. 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,” Wilson said. “It was cruel.”
“He’s very quick to anger,” added Wilson, one of six children Musk shares with his ex-wife Justine Wilson. “He is uncaring and narcissistic.”
Wilson, who told the outlet that she first came out as gay in eighth grade, also denied Musk’s claim that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical care for Wilson when she was 16.
“He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects,” she said, while adding that her father read over medical documents about the care at least twice.
“They save lives. Let’s not get that twisted,” Wilson added. “They definitely allowed me to thrive.”
Fortune has reached out to Musk and Wilson for comment.
Elon Musk on ‘deadnaming’
Musk, during a recent live-streamed interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson on his platform X, misgendered Wilson, used her dead name (the birth name of a transgender person), and described her coming out as transgender as being “killed by the woke mind virus.”
It was during this interview that the billionaire also claimed he was “tricked” into allowing Wilson to undergo transgender-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.
“I lost my son, essentially,” he said. “They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead.”
My conversation with @elonmusk. Live today at 3pm ET. https://t.co/RyaZFmvC8i
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) July 22, 2024
Since acquiring X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, Musk has been accused of turning the platform into a “toxic” environment for LGBTQ+ users after he revoked some of the app’s inclusive regulations—including its ban on deadnaming and misgendering people.
Earlier this month, Musk also announced he’s relocating the headquarters of X and SpaceX to Texas, over a California ban on schools outing trans children to their parents.
Musk told Peterson that Wilson’s gender transition has been the motivation behind his right-wing awakening: “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we’re making some progress.”
Wilson: ‘I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype’
In another X post, Musk said that Wilson was “born gay and slightly autistic” and that by age 4, she was loving musicals and using the exclamation “fabulous!” to describe his jacket.
In a series of posts on X’s archrival social media platform Threads, Wilson insisted that “None of this ever happened” and that her father must have gone to “the Milo Yiannopoulis school of gay stereotypes” when selecting his choice of words.
Post by @vivllainous
View on Threads
“He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there,” she doubled down. “And in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.”
“I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype,” she continued. “I think that says a lot about how he views queer people and children in general.”
