Elon Musk said his transgender child was “dead.” Now she’s fighting back.

On X after the interview, Musk said his child was born “gay and mildly autistic,” claiming those traits “contribute to gender identity disorder.” Wilson hit back on Threads shortly afterward, dismissing her father’s description of her childhood as “completely false.” She criticized him for spreading harmful stereotypes about trans and queer people “to score sympathy points.”

“He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he just wasn’t there,” the 20-year-old said in a post. And when her father was present, Wilson said, he bullied her “relentlessly” for her “femininity and queerness.”

Washington Post reporters called and texted Wilson’s phone number but received no response. Musk did not respond to asked for a comment from the post office via email.

The dispute is a rare public clash between Wilson and Musk, whose frustration over her transition has played a central role in his well-documented political shift to the right. In recent years, Musk has been endorsed by prominent conservatives such as Tucker Carlson, spoken out against diversity initiatives at companies and supported right-wing commentators on social media.

That political shift appeared to solidify this month when Musk endorsed former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

On X, the social media platform he owns, he has denounced gender-specific pronouns with statements that have provoked strong reactions even from people close to him.

“I absolutely support transgender, but all these pronouns are an aesthetic nightmare,” Musk wrote in late 2020. In response to a tweet earlier that year in which he wrote “pronouns suck,” his then-partner Grimes admonished him, urging him to stop and saying she “cannot support hate,” news outlets reported.

In the Peterson interview, Musk characterized the gender reassignment treatments Wilson received, including puberty blockers, as “child mutilation and sterilization”.

Musk also told Peterson that allowing children to change their gender identity was “incredibly evil” and that those who advocated for gender-affirming care for young people “should go to jail.”

Vivian is one of six children the billionaire has with writer Justine Wilson. He also has three children with musician Grimes and three children with Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk’s company Neuralink.

Many states have banned gender reassignment treatments for transgender minors. A majority of Americans oppose puberty-blocking drugs and hormone treatments for transgender children, according to a Washington Post-KFF poll, although the American Psychological Association has said access to such treatments is improving. the general well-being of these young people.

Puberty blockers prevent the release of sex hormones. As soon as a patient stops taking the blockers, his body immediately starts producing birth hormones again.

Although Musk used the term “sterilization,” Doctors who treat transgender people say puberty blockers alone do not cause infertility. Puberty blockers have been used for years in children who experience precocious puberty, and they are “definitely reversible,” says Marci Bowers, one of the country’s leading sex-reassignment surgeons and president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

However, a patient’s prognosis may vary depending on when blocking is started, whether cross-sex hormones are taken, and how long the medication is continued.

After the Peterson interview, Musk was criticized for “deadnaming” his child – that is, calling her by her birth name and gender – and others refused to use pronouns that trans and gender-expansive youth use. is a widespread and devastating problem for them, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Half of these young people say that their family “never” addresses them with the correct pronouns.

Musk was criticized by LGBTQ+ activists this year after he said that “cis” and “cisgender” were treated as insults on X. Last year, he defended a policy that allowed Assigning users the wrong gender of people on the platform is a matter of “freedom of expression”.

LGBTQ+ youth are negatively affected by “hostile political rhetoric that is often directed against them, including from prominent figures like Elon Musk,” said Jared Todd, senior press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign.

“In a world where Musk could use his public status for good, he chooses to use transgender youth as a scapegoat,” Todd said in an emailed statement to The Washington Post on Friday. “This is both sad and, given his past, not surprising.”

In recent years, Todd said, the HRC has rebuked Musk for policies that have made X “a place where harmful rhetoric and bullying can spread unchecked.” He pointed to Musk’s recent decision to move SpaceX and X’s corporate headquarters out of California in protest of a new state law that prohibits school districts from requiring parents to provide notice of a child’s gender identity change.

“Musk’s ignorant and inflammatory views about the trans community – even his own daughter – are at odds with those of the majority of Americans and are a lasting stain on his character and reputation,” Todd said.

Wilson and Musk have been distant for some time, Wilson said Thursday in her first public interview with NBC. She officially severed ties with the billionaire more than two years ago.

“I no longer live with my biological father and no longer wish to be related to him in any way,” Wilson said in a petition she filed with the California Supreme Court in April 2022 requesting an official name change.

Wilson’s resistance to her father garnered support online, including from Grimes, the musician who has children with the Tesla CEO.

“I love Vivian and will forever be so proud of her,” Grimes said in an X-post on Thursday.