Elon Musk Calls Transgender Daughter the ‘Shame of the Family’ After Her Stunning Drag Race Appearance
Elon Musk’s transgender daughter says he scolded her for being gay as a child in first interview
In an exclusive interview, Vivian Jenna Wilson said her father’s recent statements, including that she was “not a girl”, inspired her to speak out: “I’m not going to let that go easily.”
Elon Musk’s transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, said in her first interview Thursday that he was an absent father who treated her cruelly as a child because she was gay and lesbian.
Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he was “tricked” into allowing her transition-related medical treatment when she was 16.
Wilson said Musk was not tricked and that, after initially being hesitant, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to give her treatment, which required her parents’ consent.
She said Musk’s recent statements crossed a line.
“I think he assumed I wouldn’t say anything and I would let it go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “I wouldn’t do that, because if he was going to lie about me, blatantly, in front of millions of people, I wasn’t going to let it go.”
For as long as she can remember, Wilson said, Musk has not been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings in the care of their mother or a nanny, although Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk yelled at her when he was present.
“He was cold,” she said. “He was very angry. He was insensitive and narcissistic.”
Wilson said that when she was a child, Musk often harassed her for displaying feminine traits and pressured her to appear more masculine, including forcing her to speak in a deeper voice as early as elementary school.
“I was in fourth grade. We went on a road trip that I didn’t know was actually a commercial for one of the cars — I don’t remember which one — and he kept screaming at me like crazy because my voice was too high,” she said. “It was brutal.”
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Wilson and her twin brother are the children of Musk’s first wife, author Justine Musk. The couple divorced in 2008, and Wilson said her parents split custody between their two homes in the Los Angeles area.
Musk, 53, is one of the world’s richest people through his stakes in Tesla, where he is CEO, and SpaceX, which he founded. He has also become a major political figure, this month endorsing former President Donald Trump for another term in the White House. Musk has 12 children, including Wilson.
Now a college student majoring in languages, Wilson has never granted an interview before and has largely kept out of the public eye. However, she made headlines in 2022 when she sought court approval in California to change her name and, in the process, denounced her father.
“I no longer live with or seek to be related to my biological father in any way,” she said in court filings.
She told NBC News that at the time she was surprised by the media attention she had received from the court filings she filed when she was 18. She said in the interview that she stands by what she wrote, although she said she might have tried to be more articulate had she known how widespread the filing would be.
Wilson said she has not spoken to Musk in about four years and refuses to let him define her.
“I want to emphasize one thing: I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child,” she said. “My life is defined by my own choices.”
Musk focused his attention on Wilson on Monday when he discussed their relationship in a video interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson that aired live on X, saying he did not support Wilson’s gender identity.
“I basically lost my son,” Musk said. He used Wilson’s birth name, which is also known as a dead name for transgender people, and said she was “dead, killed by the awakened mind virus.”
And in a post on X, Musk said Monday that Wilson was “born gay and slightly autistic” and that, at age 4, she fits some gay stereotypes, such as liking musicals and using the exclamation “cool!” to describe certain types of clothing. Wilson told NBC News that these anecdotes were not true, although she said she acted stereotypically feminine in other ways as a child. Wilson also addressed Musk’s recent comments in a series of posts Thursday on the social media app Threads.
“
“He didn’t know what I was like as a child because he just wasn’t there,” she wrote. “And in that short period of time, I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.”
“I was reduced to a happy little stereotype,” she continued. “I think that says a lot about how he views gay people and kids in general.”
In recent years, Musk has shifted sharply toward conservative politics and has waged a campaign against transgender people and policies designed to support them. This month, he said he would withdraw his businesses from California in protest of a new state law that prohibits schools from requiring transgender children to come out to their parents.
On X, Musk has been a longtime critic of transgender rights, including medical treatments for transgender minors and the use of pronouns if they differ from the pronouns they were assigned at birth. He has promoted anti-transgender content and called for the arrest of those who provide transgender care to minors.
After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, he rescinded the app’s transgender protections, including a ban on using dead names.
Musk told Peterson that Wilson’s gender transition was what motivated him to move into conservative politics.
“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus back then, and we’re making some progress,” he said.
Wilson was also mentioned in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk — a book she told NBC News was inaccurate and unfair to her. The book called her political views “radical Marxism,” quoting Musk’s sister-in-law, Christiana Musk, but Wilson says she is not a Marxist, although she says she opposes wealth inequality. The book also refers to her by her middle name, Jenna.
Wilson said Isaacson never contacted her directly before publication. In a phone interview Thursday, Isaacson said he reached out to Wilson through family members.
Christiana Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Wilson told NBC News that for years she had considered speaking out about Musk’s behavior as a parent and as a person but that she could no longer remain silent after his comments on Monday.
She said she never received an explanation for why her father spent so little time with her and her siblings — behavior she now considers strange.
“I would say he was there, maybe 10 percent of the time. It was generous,” she said. “He had half custody, and he wasn’t there all the time.”
“It was just a truism at the time, so I don’t think I realized how unusual an experience it was,” she added.
Wilson said she has come out twice in her life: once as gay in eighth grade and again as transgender when she was 16. She said she doesn’t remember Musk’s reaction the first time, and that she wasn’t there when Musk heard about her being transgender because the pandemic had already started and she was living full-time with her mother.
“She was very supportive. I love her very much,” Wilson said of her mother.
She said the pandemic was an opportunity to escape Musk’s cruelty.
“When Covid hit, I was like, ‘I’m not going to go there,’” she said. “It was basically very lucky timing.”
In the interview, Musk told Peterson that he was “tricked” into signing documents authorizing medical treatment for Wilson — an allegation Wilson said was untrue. “I was basically tricked into signing documents for one of my older sons,” Musk said, using her birth name.
“This was before I really understood what was going on, and we were in the middle of Covid,” he said, adding that he was told she might be suicidal.
Wilson said that in 2020, when she was still a minor at age 16, she wanted to start treatment for severe gender identity disorder, but that California law required the consent of both parents. She said her mother was supportive, but Musk was initially not. She said she had been texting him about it for a while.
“I tried to do this for months, but he said I had to come see him in person,” she said. “At that point, it was very clear that we both had a very clear disdain for each other.”
When she finally came and gave him the medical forms, she said, he read them at least twice, once with her and once on his own, before he signed.
“He wasn’t fooled. He knew all the side effects,” she said.
She said she took puberty blockers before switching to hormone replacement therapy — a treatment she said saved her life and the lives of other transgender people.
“They save lives. Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “They definitely helped me grow.”
She said she believes the requirements for such treatments remain burdensome, with teens being pressured to say they are at extremely high risk of self-harm before being approved. She said she felt judged by Musk and Peterson in Monday’s interview for not being high enough risk in their view. “I was basically put in a position where, to a group of people, I had to prove whether or not I was suicidal in order to medically transition,” she said. “It was completely baffling.”
