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Elon Musk claims his living trans child was ‘killed by the woke mind virus’

"I lost my son essentially. They call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it's called deadnaming is because your son is dead"

By Alastair James

Elon Musk
Elon Musk (Image: Steve Jurvetson/WikiCommons)

Elon Musk claims he was “tricked” into helping his estranged trans child, adding she was killed by the “woke mind virus.” But the child he’s talking about is actually alive.

Vivian Jenna Wilson is one of Musk’s children with his ex-wife, the Canadian author Justine Wilson. Vivian, now 20, is a twin alongside her brother, Griffin.

In April 2022, Vivian applied to change her legal name and gender. In relating court documents, she said she no longer wanted to “be related to my biological father in any way, shape, or form.”

The estrangement follows Music tweeting, then deleting, “pronouns suck” on X, formerly Twitter, in 2020. Musk, who now owns X, also tweeted in 2020 [as per the BBC]: “I absolutely support trans. But all these pronouns are an aesthetic nightmare.”

“I was essentially tricked into signing documents” – Elon Musk

In a new interview with conservative commentator Jordan Peterson for The Daily Wire, Musk discussed his relationship – or lack of one – with Vivian.

“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys,” Musk told Peterson, referencing Vivian, before deadnaming her.

“This was really before I had any understanding of what was going on,” he continued. “And we had COVID going on. So there was a lot of confusion. And I was told [Vivian] might commit suicide.”

“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that”

Peterson then jumped in to say the idea Vivian might take her life was a “lie.” He then claimed high suicide rates for trans people were due to “underlying depression and anxiety, not the gender dysphoria.”

He then said clinicians and medical experts were “too cowardly” to admit this.

However, there is a great deal of evidence pointing to gender-affirming care lowering suicide ideation in trans people. One American study found there was a 40% drop in depression, suicide, and suicidal ideation among transgender and non-binary youth aged 13-17 if they were on gender-affirming hormone therapy. 

In 2021, the charity LGBT Hero found trans people were three times as likely to have attempted suicide in the year preceding their survey compared to cisgender people (12% vs 4%). Similarly, Just Like Us, the LGBTQ+ charity, reported last year that young LGBTQ people (18-25) were more than twice as likely to have had suicidal thoughts and feelings (85% vs 39%) than their cisgender peers.

Elsewhere in the interview with Peterson, Musk said he thinks gender-affirming care is “incredibly evil.” He also agreed with Peterson that people offering it should go to prison.

The SpaceX owner went on to claim that puberty blockers are “sterilisation drugs.”

“I lost my son essentially,” he continued. “They call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. My son is dead, killed by the woke-mind virus. I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”

Musk recently announced he would move SpaceX’s base out of California and to Texas after the former’s state governor introduced a bill prohibiting schools from effectively outing students to parents over changes in gender identity.