The tragic story of Elon Musk and his trans-identified son
I recently read a series of incredibly poignant and heartbreaking posts on the social media site Threads, which were written by Vivian Jenna Wilson. Dated July 25, 2024, much of what Vivian described was very recognizable to me: growing up with a father who wasn’t around that much, feeling different when you were a child, and experiencing teasing and bullying because of how you acted.
I can sense the anger and frustration throughout the posts that were directed towards the father. At one point, Vivian wrote: “He 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…” The initial post has garnered over 40,000 likes. Why? Probably because Vivian is the son of Elon Musk and his first wife Justine Wilson.
Born in 2004, along with twin brother Griffin, Vivian was once named Xavier. Although born male, Vivian now identifies as a female and on April 18, 2022 — one day after turning 18 years old, he legally changed his name and gender in my home state of California. At the time, Vivian stated: “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” Vivian’s parents divorced in 2008.
In addition to Vivian and Griffin, who were conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF), Elon Musk also fathered a set of triplets, also through IVF, with his first wife. He then procreated three children with the Canadian musician Grimes, one who was born using a surrogate. Recently, Musk purportedly sired his 13th child with social media influencer Ashley St. Clair.
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On July 22, 2024, Elon Musk was interviewed by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. During their conversation, Musk spoke about Vivian. Although Peterson repeatedly interrupted Musk, he very briefly described how his son Xavier began to take puberty blockers because Musk was “tricked” after being told that “Xavier might commit suicide” if they were denied. On the same day as the Peterson interview, Musk said more about the situation with his son in response to a post (about the interview) from the online activist group “Gays Against Groomers.” Musk wrote:
“Xavier was born gay and slightly autistic, two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria. I knew that from when he was about 4 years old and he would pick out clothes for me to wear like a jacket and tell me it was “fabulous!”, as well as his love of musicals fand theatre. But he was not a girl.”
First of all, “Gays Against Groomers” is a Log Cabin Republican-style homosexual activist group that is attempting to distance the LGB community from the transgender phenomenon. They have repeatedly claimed that the majority of children who identify as transgender are actually gay. This unsubstantiated theory has been most notably promoted by Jordan Peterson. In 2022, just a few months before “Gays Against Groomers” would make the same assertion, Peterson said: “Gay kids are being convinced they’re transsexual. That’s not so good for gay people, is it?” Apparently, Musk believes him. But in a 2008 study published in “The Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry,” children who ceased to identify as transgender: “…all of the girls and half of the boys reported having a heterosexual orientation.”
A couple of days after the Peterson interview and Musk’s subsequent post on Twitter, Vivian Wilson responded through his Threads account and granted an interview with NBC News; this would be Vivian’s first time speaking with a major news outlet. Most significantly, according to the interview, Musk was described as “rarely present” in either Vivian or his siblings' lives. They were “cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody.” Vivian said: “He was cold … He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.” Vivian then continued to describe Musk’s habitual absence: “He was there, I want to say, maybe 10% of the time. That’s generous … He had half custody, and he fully was not there.” He added: “It was just a fact of life at the time, so I don’t think I realized just how abnormal of an experience it was.” Regarding his mother, Vivian said: “She’s very supportive. I love her a lot.”
For many men who experienced same-sex attraction when they were young, this seems all too familiar. In his influential 1989 book Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development, Richard Isay, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and gay-rights advocate, who was instrumental in changing the way the mental health field approached the LGBT community, had to admit that:
“The majority of gay men, unlike heterosexual men who come for treatment, report that their fathers were distant during their childhood and that they lacked any attachment to them. Reports vary from ‘my father was never around, he was too busy with his job,’ to ‘he was victimized by my mother, who was always the boss in the family,’ to that of the abusive, unapproachable father.”
Dr. Simon LeVay, a neurobiologist at both Harvard Medical School and the Salk Institute, who has spent most of his career trying to locate a gay genetic determinate for homosexuality, in his book Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation, published in 2011, unlike Richard Isay, he took a less psychological and a more scientific approach to the issue of what causes homosexuality. Yet LeVay still wrote: “Gay men do indeed describe their relationships with their mothers as closer, and their relationships with their fathers as more distant and hostile, as compared with how straight men describe these relationships.” Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, who specialized in treating men with unwanted same-sex attraction writes:
“One psychoanalytic hypothesis for the connection between poor early father-son relationship and homosexuality is that during the critical gender-identity phase of development, the boy perceives the father as rejecting. As a result, he grows up failing to fully identify with his father and the masculinity he represents.”
And in an explanation that is eerily reminiscent of Vivian’s description of Musk, Nicolosi added: “One likely cause for ‘failure to identify’ is a narcissistic injury inflicted by the father onto the son (who is usually temperamentally sensitive) during the preoedipal [toddler] stage of the boy’s development.”
Yet, in his interview with Peterson, Musk blamed the “woke mind virus” for his son’s condition, and during a separate interview, he blamed “communism.” But how is a 4-year-old boy being influenced by the woke mind virus and communism? He isn’t. Though he is deeply affected by the absence of his father. Musk blames everyone except himself. But I’ve seen it hundreds of times, some people would rather believe that their son was “born gay,” or even born in the wrong body, rather than admit to themselves that they were neglectful or abusive parents.
Interestingly, in his conversation with Musk, Jordan Peterson never picked up on any of this. After all, exploring family dynamics is a basic precept in child psychology. Instead, Peterson became visibly agitated when reacting to Musk’s description of how he was “tricked” into agreeing that his son could receive puberty blockers due to the danger of suicide:
“That was a lie right from the outset. No reliable clinician ever believed that. There was never any evidence for that, 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…that is so pathological that it's almost incomprehensible. I can't imagine anything worse … I can't imagine a therapist doing anything worse than that.”
I can imagine something just as terrible. For many years, the threat of increased suicidality has also been used against parents with so-called “gay” children. But, as Peterson explained regarding gender dysphoric youth, there are likewise serious underlying mental health issues among LGB persons that persist into adulthood even in countries with a long history of LGBT acceptance, like The Netherlandsand in Sweden, where male same-sex couples are allowed to marry. However Peterson and others think that homosexuality is the natal identity that trans children should return to. Because, as Musk believes his son was “born gay.”
But there is little proof to substantiate his claim. Even the highly gay-affirmative American Psychological Association acknowledged “there is no consensus among scientists” on this issue. In a large study looking at identical twins (Vivian has a fraternal twin brother) only 11% of both male siblings were gay. A very well-known study found that among non-twin brothers of male homosexuals, 9% were also gay. But, most surprisingly, 11% of adoptive brothers were also homosexual. As a result, famed geneticist Terry R. McGuire stated: “The fact that biological brothers and adopted brothers show the same incidence of homosexuality strongly suggests that it is entirely environmental in origin.”
Probably the most grotesque thing that Musk asserted about his son was the boy’s supposed childhood behavior which included saying the word “fabulous” and his love of musicals and theatre somehow proved the child was gay. Dr. Joseph Nicolosi once wrote about how:
“…a gender-nonconforming boy can be sensitive, kind, social, artistic, gentle — and heterosexual. He can be an artist, an actor, a dancer, a cook, a musician — and a heterosexual. These innate artistic skills are “who he is,” part of the wonderful range of human abilities. No one should try to discourage those abilities and traits.”
I remember a rather flamboyant friend from my days as a gay man in 1990s San Francisco. As a child, he told me about how he continuously attempted to dress up like the singer Madonna as he danced about the house in front of his incredulous father who stared endlessly at a TV sports channel. He was trying to get his attention. I never met his father, until my friend was dying of AIDS. Unfortunately, that’s what finally got his attention.
Finally, with Elon Musk and the story of his transgender son, I see a confused and hurt father, who refuses to accept any responsibility, and an angry and injured son. In a heartbreaking Instagram post, Vivian shared how he first learned about having another half-sibling — through Reddit. I am sympathetic towards Vivian. Not much towards Musk, because he continues to repeat old mistakes: most shamelessly, by having children with women he never marries. And there is little social pressure on him to reform. For example, the numerous “conservative” influencers who congratulated the woman who gave birth to yet another of Musk’s children. Men have been allowed to check out in this society, either to physically abandon their kids or to mentally do so by escaping into their “man caves.”
I hope Elon Musk one day apologizes to his son for the pain he caused. Maybe then, there can be some healing.
Joseph Sciambra has written extensively concerning the real-life issues of pornography, homosexuality, and the occult. His articles have been published by LifeSiteNews, The Stream, and First Things. He received his BA from the University of California at Berkeley in Art History and his MA from Sonoma State University. His blog and podcast can be found at: josephsciambra.com
