In a disjointed two-hour conversation streamed live on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk discussed topics ranging from Christian imagery to the “carnivore diet.” But it was Musk’s comments about his estranged trans daughter, Vivian Wilson — whom he deadnamed and misgendered repeatedly — that caused the biggest stir.
Now, Wilson, 20, has started to tell her side of the story.
Musk had painted himself as a victim of Wilson’s gender transition and legal name change (she took the surname of her mother, Justine Wilson, in 2022), claiming that he had been “tricked” into signing paperwork that allowed Vivian to go on puberty blockers. Referring to Wilson with male pronouns and by her birth name, Musk lamented that his “son” had been “killed” by “the woke mind virus,” admitting that this family affair inspired his turn toward far-right politics in recent years.
On Thursday, Wilson pushed back against Musk on her Threads account, first challenging a Monday tweet in which he had again deadnamed and misgendered her and claimed that she was born “gay and slightly autistic.” Musk said he had known this from the time that Vivian was four years old, as Vivian “would pick out clothes for me to wear like a jacket and tell me it was ‘Fabulous!'” and loved musicals.
“There’s a lot of stuff I need to debunk which I will get to don’t worry, but I want to start with what I find the funniest which is the notorious ‘slightly autistic’ tweet,” Wilson wrote in a post on her Threads account, sharing a screenshot of the Musk tweet with her deadname covered up.
“This is entirely fake,” Wilson wrote in a second post. “Like, literally none of this ever happened. Ever. I don’t even know where he got this from. My best guess is that he went to the Milo [Yiannopoulos] 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.” (Yiannopoulos is a right-wing troll and operative who claims to be “ex-gay” and says he regards homosexuality as “an addiction.”)
In a subsequent post, Wilson wrote: “I want to make one thing absolutely clear. I disowned him, not the other way around.” Indeed, when legally changing her name and gender in 2022, she told a California court that she no longer wished to be related to Musk “in any way, shape or form.” By that point, Musk had already tweeted criticism of preferred pronouns and said he might support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had signed the state’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law that year, if he ran for president in 2024.
As for Musk’s claims that she demonstrated passions for musicals and fashion as a child, Wilson went on to say that her father’s account made no sense, since four-year-olds aren’t aware of such concepts. “This entire thing is completely made up and there’s a reason for this,” she wrote. “He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there, and in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.” Wilson then brushed aside Musk’s insistence that she’s not a woman, noting that she’s legally recognized as female. Musk himself, she said, is lost “in a ketamine-fueled haze, desperate for attention and validation from an army of degenerate red-pilled incels and pick-mes who are quick to give it to him.” (Musk has talked openly about taking ketamine for therapeutic purposes.)
Wilson elaborated on some of the comments she made in her Threads posts in an exclusive interview with NBC News, accusing Musk of being an “uncaring and narcissistic” father who was almost totally absent from her childhood. “He was there, I want to say, maybe 10 percent of the time. That’s generous,” she recalled.
When Musk was present, Wilson alleges, he would frequently criticize her and police her gender expression, recounting one trip she took with him when she was in the fourth grade. “He was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” she told NBC News. “It was cruel.”
Wilson also elaborated on her decision to speak out on Threads “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, explaining why she chose to speak out. “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’s Threads account, which had around 30 followers before her comments on Thursday, quickly accumulated several thousand more followers. Some signaled that they supported her against Musk, with one writing, “hope you’re not too bothered by what he says about you.” Wilson replied, “I’m not lol. I’ve just started to find it funny at this point. Calling me dead on a podcast with JORDAN PETERSON of all people while basically admitting you have zero reading comprehension by saying you were ‘tricked’ into signing documents that you read over multiple times is basically a parody of itself. Like it’s honestly camp.”
Wilson had already posted a few reactions to the Peterson interview as Musk’s comments about her began to make the rounds. “I look pretty good for a dead bitch,” she wrote in reply to a headline about Musk saying she had been “killed.” (Another post with the same wording is now pinned on her profile.) “I didn’t know I was dead, this is news to me,” she replied to a clip of Musk’s comment. She also uploaded a video of herself assuring followers she was “fine, actually,” and “formulating a response.” Wilson asked for patience as she figured it out. “Hold your god damn horses for five more seconds, okay? I promise it’s getting worked on.”
Thus far, at least one person in Musk’s orbit has come forward expressing their support for Wilson. “I love and am forever endlessly proud of Vivian,” Musk’s ex-partner Grimes, who shares three children with the billionaire, posted on July 25. Grimes also responded to a troll in her replies accusing Vivian of “changing what God created,” retorting, “God gave us hands to build cathedrals, rockets to the moon. It’s clearly divine to make use of gods greatest gift to humanity, which is creativity.”
Musk did not immediately address his daughter’s remarks on Thursday morning. On X, he shared video from the 1992 Olympics opening ceremony and retweeted an AI-generated image of himself in Roman military armor posted by a cryptocurrency promoter. The caption reads: “Now is the time to fight the anti-human woke mind virus with everything!”
Fri., July 26, 2024, 10:06 a.m. This story has been updated with additional reporting.
