Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said in her first interview on Thursday that he was an absent father who treated her cruelly as a child because she was gay and feminine.
Wilson, 20, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity in an exclusive interview with NBC News. On social media and in an online interview, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and claimed he was “misled” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.
Wilson said Musk was not fooled and that, after initial hesitation, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required her parental consent.
Musk's recent statements crossed a line, she said.
“I think he assumed I wouldn't say anything and that I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a telephone interview. “Which I'm not going to do, because if you're going to lie about me, for example, outright to an audience of millions, I'm not going to let that go.”
Wilson said that for as long as she can remember, Musk has not been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or nannies, even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk would scold her when he was present.
“He was cold,” she said. “He gets angry very quickly. He’s uncaring and narcissistic.”
Wilson said Musk harassed her as a child for displaying feminine traits and pressured her to appear more masculine, encouraging her to raise her voice as early as elementary school.
“I was in fourth grade. We went on a road trip that I didn't realize was actually a commercial for one of the cars — I can't remember which one — and he was constantly yelling at me meanly because my voice was too high,” she said. “It was cruel.”
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Wilson and her twin brother were born to Musk's first wife, author Justine Musk. The couple divorced in 2008, and Wilson said her parents shared custody between their homes in the Los Angeles area.
Musk, 53, is among the world’s richest people thanks to his stakes in Tesla, where he is CEO, and SpaceX, which he founded. He has also become a prominent political figure after this month endorsing former President Donald Trump for a new White House term. Musk has 12 children, including Wilson.
Wilson, now a college student studying languages, has never given an interview before and has largely stayed out of the public eye. She did, however, gain attention in 2022 when she filed for court approval to change her name in California, suing her father.
“I no longer live with my biological father and no longer want to be related to him in any way,” the woman said in the official report.
She told NBC News that she was surprised at the time by the media attention the legal filing, which she filed when she was 18, received. She said in the interview that she stands by her writing, though she said she might have wanted to be more articulate if she had known how much attention it would receive.
Wilson said she hadn't spoken to Musk in four years and refused 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 should be determined by my own choices.”
Musk honored Wilson on Monday by discussing their relationship in a video interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, streamed live on X, saying he did not support Wilson's gender identity.
“I lost my son, basically,” Musk said. He used Wilson’s birth name, also known as a deadname for transgender people, and said she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
And in a post on X on Monday, Musk said that Wilson was “born gay and mildly autistic” and that by age 4, she fit certain gay stereotypes, such as liking musicals and using the exclamation “fabulous!” to describe certain clothes. Wilson told NBC News the anecdotes aren’t true, though she said she acted stereotypically feminine in other ways as a child.
Wilson also responded to Musk's recent comments in a series of posts on the social media app Threads on Thursday.
“He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he simply wasn’t there,” she wrote. “And in the short time he was, I was harassed relentlessly for my femininity and queerness.”
“I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype,” she continued. “I think that says a lot about how he views queer people and kids in general.”
In recent years, Musk has made a hard rightward turn toward conservative politics, campaigning against transgender people and policies that support them. This month, he said he was pulling his companies out of California to protest a new state law that would ban schools from requiring trans children to be turned over to their parents.
Musk has criticized X for transgender rights for years, including medical treatments for minors who identify as trans, and the use of pronouns if they are different than what would be used at birth. He has promoted anti-trans content and for arresting people who provide transgender care to minors.
After Musk bought X, then Twitter, in 2022, he rolled back the app's protections for transgender people, including a ban on the use of dead names.
Musk told Peterson that Wilson's gender transition was the motivation for his move into conservative politics.
“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we are making some progress,” he said.
Wilson was also mentioned in a biography of Musk by author Walter Isaacson — a book she told NBC News was inaccurate and dishonest. The book refers to her politics as “radical Marxism,” quoting Musk's sister-in-law Christiana Musk, but Wilson said she is not a Marxist, though she said she opposes wealth inequality. The book also calls her by her middle name, Jenna.
Wilson said Isaacson never approached her directly prior to the publication. In a telephone interview Thursday, Isaacson said he approached Wilson through family members.
Christiana Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Wilson told NBC News that she had been considering speaking out about Musk's behavior as a parent and as a person for years, but that she could no longer remain silent after his comments Monday.
She said she was never given an explanation for why her father spent so little time with her and her siblings, a behavior she now considers odd.
“He was there, I want to say, maybe 10 percent of the time. That’s generous,” she said. “He had half custody, and he wasn’t there at all.”
“It was just a fact of life at that time, so I don't think I realized how abnormal the experience was,” she added.
Wilson said she has come out twice in her life: once as gay in the eighth grade and a second time 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 found out from others that she was transgender because the pandemic had already begun and she was living with her mother full-time.
“She's very supportive. I love her very much,” Wilson said of her mother.
The pandemic was an opportunity to escape Musk's cruelty, she said.
“When Covid hit, I was like, ‘I’m not going there,’” she said. “It was actually very fortunate timing.”
Musk told Peterson in the interview that he was “tricked” into signing documents authorizing transgender-related medical treatment for Wilson — a claim Wilson says is untrue.
“I was essentially 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 had Covid,” he said, adding that he was told she might commit suicide.
Wilson said that in 2020, when she was still a minor at 16, she wanted to seek treatment for severe gender dysphoria, but needed both parents’ permission under California law. She said her mother was supportive, but Musk initially wasn’t. She said she texted him about it for a while.
“I had been trying for months, but he said I had to meet 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 went to him and gave him the medical forms, she said he had read them over at least twice, once with her and then again alone, before signing them.
“He was absolutely not fooled. He knew all the side effects,” she said.
She said she took puberty blockers before switching to hormone replacement therapy, which she said was life-saving for her and other transgender people.
“They save lives. Let’s not twist that,” she said. “They absolutely made me flourish.”
She said she believed the requirements to get such treatments were still onerous, with teens being pressured to say they were at extreme risk of self-harm before they were approved. She said she felt judged by Musk and Peterson, in Monday’s interview, for not being considered high enough of a risk.
“I’m basically at a point where I have to prove to a group of people whether or not I was suicidal to justify medically transitioning,” she said. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
