Elon Musk's Gender Journey

From "pronouns suck" to "child sterilizers should go to prison for life"

Elon Musk has been on quite the gender journey lately. No, he didn’t change his name to Ellen, put on a she/her pronouns pin, and don a bad wig (maybe next Halloween?). Even better: he’s come out swinging against the abuses of the gender cult.

While he has never been one to shy away from commenting on controversial political issues, it did take Musk a while to begin expressing his thoughts on this particular topic. But boy, has he ever.

It all started with that classic tweet in July 2020: Pronouns suck.

The two words caused much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Elon’s ex-partner, Grimes, also responded in a now-deleted tweet: “I cannot support hate. Please stop this. I know this isn’t your heart.”

Aside from posting some memes here and there, Elon remained largely silent on the issue even after he bought Twitter—although it was a great sign that accounts suspended for “misgendering” and other gender-related wrongthink were able to appeal their suspensions and came back once he took over.

In April 2023, he was thinking about pronouns again, calling them virtue signals and a shield used by bad humans. A couple of days later, Twitter removed its policy against “misgendering” and “deadnaming.” Another win!

Since April, Musk has also been tweeting his opinion that anyone who maims and sterilizes a child (through “gender-affirming care”) should go to prison for life. One more notch for the good guys.

Things really began to ramp up at the end of May, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Space with the app owner. DeSantis, of course, is well-known for signing bills keeping women’s school sports single-sex, prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity, and prohibiting “gender-affirming” care for minors.

Though the space started late due to glitches, it eventually continued on without further disruptions and Musk and DeSantis called it a success.

But anyone who thought things were dramatic up to this point hadn’t seen anything yet.

On June 1, to kick off pride month, Daily Wire was set to release the film “What Is A Woman?” for free on Twitter. However, Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing wrote a long thread explaining that Twitter had canceled the deal and would be labeling the film as “hateful conduct” due to two instances of “misgendering.”

One of those instances was a Canadian father who has been jailed for speaking out against his teenage daughter’s transition.

Musk responded to Boreing that the film would be allowed and that many people at Twitter had made a mistake. He also noted that declining to use someone’s “preferred pronouns” breaks no laws.

However, when the film was uploaded later that day, it was instantly restricted and could not be shared or commented on. Musk promised that the system would be updated to allow comments and deliberate sharing, though he also explained that the film would not be recommended to non-Daily Wire followers or have any advertising associated with it.

Later that evening, Musk reiterated his commitment to lobbying for the criminalization of irreversible “gender-affirming” care.

Early the next day, as promised, the “hateful conduct” tag was removed from the documentary and Twitter users could once again like, retweet, and share it. Musk tweeted it out as well, encouraging every parent to view it and pinning the tweet to the top of his 140-million-follower profile.

After Musk’s boost of the film, the Daily Wire tweet that featured it was viewed more than 65 million times within 24 hours.

It was a satisfying end to what will surely go down as a notorious battle in the Gender Wars, but the cherry on top of the day for me was Musk replying with an exclamation point to a Reduxx story.

And not even just any story. Written by Genevieve Gluck, the article discussed how a lesbian bar in France was forced to close due to vandalism and death threats from trans activists.

Musk was still not done with the latest round of gender tweeting. The next day, swimmer and force of nature Riley Gaines—who has competed against William “Lia” Thomas—tweeted about a friend who was suspended from school for not wanting to undress in front of a male in the locker room. “Incredibly unjust,” Musk replied.

Love him or hate him (and boy were some people quick to express their intense dislike when I made an excited Facebook post about his taking notice of Reduxx), the attention that Musk can bring to important media and figures in this debate is pretty incredible. I’d certainly be lying if I said I felt I was above the exposure he can help provide.

And he shows no signs of relenting. Over the past few days, Musk has opined that the obsession with gender is “late stage civilization complacency,” replied with a laughing emoji to J.K. Rowling when she joked about being the leader of a cult, and continued to call “gender-affirming care” for minors “pure evil” and “castration,” among other commentary.

Gender ideology may have had a head start, but we have the winning message: don’t sterilize kids, and don’t force us to pretend that when a man named Will grows out his hair and puts on a women’s bathing suit, he is now a woman called Lia. We must keep spreading the word, but we’ve got some pretty big names in our corner now.