Elon Musk’s transgender daughter, in first interview, says he scolded her for being gay as a child

Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s transgender daughter, said Thursday in her first interview that he was an absentee father who was cruel to her as a child for being strange and feminine.

Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made on Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview published online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and claimed he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.

Wilson said Musk was not misled and that, after initially hesitating, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required her parents’ consent.

Musk’s recent statements crossed the line, she said.

“I think he assumed I wouldn’t say anything and would just let it go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not going to just let it go.”

Wilson said that for as long as he can remember, 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 nannies, although Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk scolded her when he was present.

“He was cold,” she said. “He gets angry very quickly. He is aloof and narcissistic.”

Wilson said that when she was a child, Musk harassed her for displaying feminine features and pressured her to appear more masculine, including pressuring her to deepen her voice as early as elementary school.

“I was in fourth grade. We went on a trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars – I don’t remember which one – and he was constantly shouting at me because my voice was so loud,” she said. “It was cruel.”

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Wilson and his twin brother were born to Musk’s first wife, author Justine Musk. The couple divorced in 2008 and Wilson said his parents shared custody between their homes in the Los Angeles area.

Musk, 53, is among the richest people in the world due to his stakes in Tesla, where he is CEO, and SpaceX, which he founded. He has also become a significant political figure, having endorsed former President Donald Trump this month for another term in the White House. Musk has 12 children, including Wilson.

Now a college student studying languages, Wilson has never given an interview before and has largely remained out of public view. She, however, attracted attention in 2021 when sought judicial approval in California to change his name and, in the process, denounced his father.

“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape, or form,” she said in the court filing.

She told NBC News that at the time, she was surprised by the media attention to the court case, which she filed when she was 18. She said in the interview that she stands by what she wrote, although she said what she could have tried would have been more eloquent if she had known the coverage she would receive.

Wilson said she hadn’t spoken to Musk in about four years and refused to be defined by him.

“I would like to emphasize one thing: I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I’m not a child,” she said. “My life should be defined by my own choices.”

Musk called out Wilson on Monday, speaking about their relationship in a video interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, broadcast live on X, saying he did not support Wilson’s gender identity.

“I lost my son, essentially,” Musk said. He used Wilson’s birth name, also known as a dead name for trans people, and said she was “dead, dead by the waking mind virus.”

And in a post on to describe certain clothes. Wilson told NBC News that the anecdotes are 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 doesn’t know what I was like as a kid because I just wasn’t there,” she wrote. “And in the short time he was there, 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 queer people and kids in general.”

In recent years, Musk has taken action hard–turn right in conservative politics and has waged a campaign against trans people and policies designed to support them. This month, he said he was withdrawing their business of California to protest a new state law that prohibits schools from requiring transgender children to come out to their parents.

At X, Musk has for years criticized transgender rights, including medical treatment for minors who identify as trans, and the use of pronouns if they are different from what would be used at birth. He promoted anti-trans content and called for arresting people who provide trans care to minors.

After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2021, he rolled back the app protections for trans peopleincluding a ban on the use of dead names.

Musk told Peterson that Wilson’s gender transition was the motivation for his entry into conservative politics.

“I swore to destroy the waking mind virus after this 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 unfair to her. The book refers to her politics as “radical Marxism,” citing Musk’s sister-in-law, Christiana Musk, but Wilson said she is not a Marxist, although she says she opposes wealth inequality. The book also calls her by her middle name, Jenna.

Wilson said Isaacson never reached out to her directly before publication. In a phone interview Thursday, Isaacson said he contacted Wilson through family members.

Christiana Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Wilson told NBC News that for years she considered speaking out about Musk’s behavior as a father 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 finds strange.

“He was there, I mean, maybe 10% of the time. That’s generous,” she said. “He had half custody and wasn’t fully there.”

“It was just a fact of life at the time, so I guess I didn’t realize how abnormal an experience it was,” she added.

Wilson said he came out twice in his life: once as gay in eighth grade and a second time as transgender when he was 16. She said she doesn’t remember Musk’s response the first time and that she wasn’t present when Musk heard from others that she was transgender because the pandemic had already started and she was living full-time with her mother.

“She supports me a lot. I love her so much,” Wilson said of his mother.

The pandemic was an opportunity to escape Musk’s cruelty, she said.

“When Covid hit, I thought, ‘I’m not going there,’” she said. “It was basically a very lucky moment.”

Musk told Peterson in the interview that he was “tricked” into signing documents authorizing transgender-related medical treatment for Wilson — an allegation that Wilson said was not true.

“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my oldest children,” Musk said, using her birth name.

“This was before I really understood what was going on and we had Covid happening,” he said, adding that he was told she might commit suicide.

Wilson said that in 2020, when he was still a minor at age 16, he wanted to begin treatment for severe gender dysphoria, but needed the consent of both parents under California law. She said her mother was supportive, but Musk initially wasn’t. She said she had been texting him about it for a while.

“I had been trying to do this for months, but he said I needed to meet him in person,” she said. “At that point, it became very clear that we both had a very distinct disdain for each other.”

When she finally went to give him the medical forms, she said, he read them at least twice, once with her and then again alone, before signing them.

“He was not deceived in any way. He knew all the side effects,” she said.

She said she took puberty blockers before switching to hormone replacement therapy — treatments that she says saved lives for her and other trans people.

“They save lives. Let’s not get this mixed up,” she said. “They definitely allowed me to thrive.”

She said she believes the requirements to obtain such treatments remain onerous, with teens pressured to say they are at extreme risk of self-harm before they are approved. She said she felt judged by Musk and Peterson in Monday’s interview for not taking a high enough risk in her eyes.

“I’ve basically been put in a spot where, for a group of people, I have to basically prove whether I was suicidal or not to justify medically transitioning,” she said. “It’s absolutely incomprehensible.”

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with