Elon Musk’s daughter calls him an absent father
Would you like to do some Muskian mathematics? Here we go: there are 24 hours in a day and even the most superhuman among us need to spend a few of those hours asleep. Elon Musk, unless he has figured out a way to clone himself, is just one person. He has at least 12 kids with multiple women. His first child tragically died as a baby and a couple of his offspring are adults now, but he has six kids under the age of five. He also runs six companies and oversees more than 130,000 people around the world. And he spends an inordinate amount of his life tweeting. Bearing this busy existence in mind, how on earth does the billionaire spend any significant amount of time with his kids?
He doesn’t, is the short answer. Basic maths should tell you this – but Musk’s own daughter has told us as well. On Thursday, the billionaire’s 20-year-old estranged trans daughter, Vivian Wilson, painted a very unflattering picture of Musk as a father on Threads. (Threads is Meta’s version of Twitter.) Wilson said her father was never there when she was growing up and when he was around, he relentlessly harassed her for her “femininity and queerness”. The 20-year-old, whose mother, Justine Wilson, divorced Musk in 2008, expanded on these comments in an interview with NBC News where she called her dad “uncaring and narcissistic”.
Wilson, who legally dropped Musk’s name in 2022, has largely stayed out of the public eye until now. But she spoke out because her dad basically left her no other choice. During a recent rambling interview with the rightwing professor and beef enthusiast Jordan Peterson, Musk went on a disturbing anti-trans rant about his daughter. The tech magnate claimed that he had been “tricked” into letting Vivian receive gender-affirming care when she was 16. He then went on to call gender-affirming care “child mutilation” and deadname his daughter.
“So my son … is dead. Killed by the woke mind virus,” Musk told Peterson. This would be a horrible thing to say under any circumstance, but it’s even more horrific considering that Musk has suffered through the actual death of a child: his first son, Nevada, died at just 10 weeks of SIDS.
Musk didn’t stop there. After the Peterson interview, he hopped on X, where he “informed” his 191 million followers that his daughter “was born gay and slightly autistic, two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria”. He added that he had known Wilson was gay because she liked musicals when she was four and would pick out jackets for him and call them “fabulous”. All hallmarks of homosexuality, obviously! Musk rounded this off by concluding: “He was not a girl.”
Wilson then retorted on Threads that the anecdotes about clothes and musicals were fabricated. “This entire thing is completely made up and there’s a reason for this. He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there,” Wilson said. “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.”
It certainly does – although it doesn’t say much that we didn’t know already. Musk, who controls a highly influential media platform, has a much documented history of promoting anti-trans views. He also loves sharing parenting advice with the world. One of the billionaire’s favourite talking points is that there is a fertility crisis and everyone needs to be popping out more children. He’s a little fuzzier on how people who don’t have billions in the bank are going to afford to look after all these children – perhaps because he doesn’t actually care about the kids themselves, he’s just interested in producing more cannon fodder for capitalism.
This obsession with making babies and apparent disdain for looking after children is one that’s widespread on the right. Republicans want to force women to give birth but they seem to have absolutely no interest in the welfare of these children after they exit the womb. There are a wealth of studies that show states with the toughest abortion laws have the weakest maternal support.
You know what this episode also says a lot about? Just how little society expects of fathers. It infuriates me no end that many people just don’t seem to care that Musk keeps going to great lengths to have more children that he spends very little time with. Can you imagine if he were a woman? He would face nonstop attacks for not being there for his kids. He would face constant criticism for being a bad mother. People always expect women to put their children first. While things are slowly changing, society has far lower standards for fathers. All they need to do is change an occasional diaper and people are ready to crown them dad of the year.
The childless cat lady discourse is still going strong
Last week, this newsletter covered JD Vance’s viral comments about “childless cat ladies”. Since then, the remarks have gone even more viral. Jennifer Aniston has said that she hopes Vance’s daughter never needs IVF in the future. Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, has also weighed in to say: “I love my three parents.” On Friday, Vance defended his comments, saying they were “sarcastic”.
JD Vance calls for ‘federal response’ to block women from traveling for abortions
I’m afraid Donald Trump’s running mate is in the news again after more of his terrible comments about women resurfaced.
Rumours that JD Vance had sexual relations with a piece of furniture are greatly exaggerated
They are, however, all over the internet. The Associated Press even put up a fact-checking article about the internet joke and then suddenly retracted it.
US doctors who worked in Gaza say real death toll much higher than reported
“We cannot forget the scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that we witnessed ourselves,” says an eight-page letter to Joe Biden, Jill Biden and Kamala Harris written by dozens of US healthcare workers who were in Gaza. “It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 92,000, an astonishing 4.2% of Gaza’s population,” they wrote. The letter also speaks of their experience of seeing children who had been deliberately shot in the head. Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu, the man behind these horrors, was given a standing ovation by Congress on Wednesday.
Sonya Massey, killed by police after asking for their help, deserved better
Not only did a police officer shoot Massey in the face, someone at the scene of the shooting falsely reported that Massey’s wound had been self-inflicted. “Massey’s death is a bleak reminder that Black people are still being hunted like prey in their own homes,” writes Tayo Bero.
Iowa’s draconian abortion ban will take effect on Monday
The law, which bans most abortions after six weeks, was passed last year but a judge had blocked it from being enforced. The hold has now been lifted.
Ice baths, rare steak and no masturbation: was Walt Whitman the first wellness influencer?
This piece is pure poetry.
Sweaty women of the world, unite!
“In a time of increasing global temperatures, we are simply going to have to lose our fear of sweat,” says the Guardian’s Nell Frizzell.
The week in pawtriarchy
Dogs can smell your stress, a new study has found. And sorry to stress out all the dog owners out there, but when you’re worried, they get sad. So try to avoid reading the news while your dog is around, eh? Or you’ll both go barking mad.
