Source: Vivian Wilson/Threads

Elon Musk's Trans Daughter Says She's Leaving the U.S. Following Trump Win

Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 3 MIN.

One transgender American who says she's leaving the U.S. following Donald Trump's second White House win is none other than Elon Musk's estranged daughter, Vivian Wilson.

The 20-year-old – whose father has claimed is "slightly autistic" and a victim of something he calls the "woke mind virus" – "cut ties with father in 2022, when she filed a petition to change her gender, as well as her name, which she hoped would sever any connection between herself and her biological father," the New York Post recalled.

Musk, the Post added, "was an outspoken supporter of the President-elect's successful campaign."

Taking to Threads after Trump's election victory, Wilson posted, "I've thought this for a while, but yesterday confirmed it for me. I don't see my future being in the United States."

Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, made anti-trans rhetoric a fixture of their campaign, pumping millions into attack ads targeting the trans community.

Critics point to Project 2025, a 900+ page book outlining a radical reshaping of the federal government and American society, as a cause for concern for the rights of all marginalized groups, including transgender Americans, whose gender identity the document slams as |"pornography"> that declares that those who share such "pornography" – i.e., the stories of trans people – should be prosecuted as sex offenders.

While some have argued that the United States will find its way through a second Trump administration, just as it found it way through the first, Wilson adopted a broader view.

"Even if he's only in office for 4 years, even if the anti-trans regulations magically don't happen, the people who willingly voted this in are not going anywhere anytime soon," Wilson noted.

As previously reported, Musk misgendered and deadnamed his daughter in tweeted and livestreamed comments last summer, declaring that she is "not a girl," and portraying her in pathologizing terms. Musk lamented that his "son" had been "killed by the woke mind virus" and claimed that Wilson was "born gay and slightly autistic, two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria."

Musk further described scenarios in which Wilson, as a four-year-old, would help dress him up and would call the jackets she supposedly picked out for him "fabulous". He also claimed that Wilson had loved musical theater from an early age – all indications, Musk suggested, that told him she was gay.

The remarks prompted Wilson, who has otherwise sought to keep out of the limelight, to speak out. Wilson dismissed his stories about her as a child as pure fabrication in an interview with NBC News.

"I think he was under the assumption that I wasn't going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged," Wilson said in that 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 just gonna let that slide."

In posts made to Threads at that time, Wilson said that memories of her childhood Musk claimed to have were "entirely fake."

"Like, literally none of this ever happened," Wilson added. "Ever. I don't even know where he got this from."

Wilson derided the idea that she had loved musical theater as a young child, and wrote, "I never picked out jackets for him to wear and I was most certainly not calling them 'fabulous' because literally what the f***."

Added Wilson: "I did not use the word fabulous when I was four because once again I would like to reiterate...I was four."

Wilson is not the only high-profile transgender American to speak publicly of leaving the country. Actor Laverne Cox told Variety that she is so "scared" of what Trump will do to the trans community she is contemplating a move abroad. Referencing a the medical necessity of continuing her hormone therapy treatments, Cox disclosed that she is stockpiling estrogen.

The actor's fear wasn't entirely for herself; she tearfully described how the transgender daughter of friends was a high school student who was "stealth" about being trans, with her classmates not knowing.

"I'm so scared for her," Cox said, sobbing. "I just want her to be safe. At this point, whatever you have to do to be safe and not be killed or terrorized so much as you want to kill yourself, stay alive."


by Kilian Melloy , EDGE Staff Reporter

Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.

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