Elon Musk’s fraught relationship with his transgender child went public this week after the X owner said he was “tricked” into signing off on puberty blockers and declared that “my son Xavier is dead.”
Vivian Wilson, a 20-year-old college student who was born Xavier Musk, swung back after her estranged father expressed his anguish over her gender transition and blamed the “woke mind virus” for fueling the surge in young people identifying as the opposite sex.
“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything, and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Ms. Wilson told NBC News in a Thursday phone interview. “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.”
Ms. Wilson, who legally changed her name and gender identification in 2022, said her father was largely absent during her childhood, calling him “cold,” “quick to anger,” “uncaring” and “narcissistic.”
“I would like to emphasize one thing: I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child,” said Ms. Wilson, who began taking puberty blockers at 16. “My life should be defined by my own choices.”
The beautiful Vivian Jenna Wilson, the daughter of @elonmusk confirms she’s not dead. pic.twitter.com/XUCwXyU8WY
— Miss Jilianne (@MissJilianne) July 25, 2024
The comments came shortly after Mr. Musk said during an interview on X and DailyWire+ with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson that he was bamboozled into agreeing to his child’s medicalized gender transition.
“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys, Xavier,” Mr. Musk said. “This is before I had any understanding of what was going on. We had COVID going on. There was a lot of confusion. I was told Xavier might commit suicide.”
Mr. Peterson ripped the suicide warning as “a lie right from the outset.”
“No reliable clinician ever believed that. There was never any evidence for that,” he said. “And also, If there’s a higher suicide rate, the reason is because of the underlying depression and anxiety and not because of the gender dysphoria.”
Mr. Musk said “it wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs.”
“And so I lost my son essentially,” he said. “They call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Ms. Wilson disputed his account, saying he read the paperwork at least twice. “He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects,” she said.
Mr. Musk announced last week that he would move the headquarters of two of his companies — X and SpaceX — out of California after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation banning schools from disclosing students’ gender-transition efforts to parents without student permission.
“So I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that. And we’re making some progress,” he told Mr. Peterson.
WOW. This is a massive revelation by @elonmusk and explains why he is so vehemently against gender ideology and the barbaric practices that come with it.
— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) July 22, 2024
He said was tricked by doctors into signing documents for his son to be given “puberty blockers,” and was told that he would… pic.twitter.com/6Cdq2ronOB
He said Monday on X that “Xavier was born gay and slightly autistic, two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria,” and displayed some traditionally feminine behaviors as a child, but that “he was not a girl.”
Ms. Wilson countered on Threads that “[h]e 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.”
Mr. Musk and his first wife, Canadian author Justine Musk, were married in 2000 and divorced in 2008 after having six children, one of whom died at 11 weeks of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). They shared custody of their surviving five children.
Ms. Wilson, who has a twin brother, said she has not spoken with her father in about four years. The last name “Wilson” is her mother’s maiden name.
In her 2022 court filing to change her name and gender identification, she said, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
In the interview, Mr. Peterson denounced therapists who warn parents that their children could kill themselves unless they agree to drugs to treat their gender dysphoria, calling it “so pathological that it’s almost incomprehensible.”
Replied Mr. Musk: “It’s incredibly evil, and I agree with you that the people who have been promoting this should go to prison.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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