Many liberals know that Elon Musk has taken such a bizarre stance against transgender people, that he makes J. K. Rowling look like an ally. Most recently, he banned the word “cisgender” from Twitter, and called it a slur.
This is yet another sad day for Twitter, and a true sign of how far it’s fallen under the direction of Generalismo Musk. Twitter was almost certainly the most left-leaning social media site, and now most of its core users are doing nothing but generating free content and ad revenue for a man that clearly despises them and everything they care about. It has rapidly become a shell of what it used to be.
It’d be like going to your favorite restaurant and finding out the new owner is an Alt-right oligarch who financed his early business whims with apartheid money through his dad owning diamond mines in South Africa. Then, he’s decided to let your favorite restaurant become a platform for white supremacy-sympathetic views.
We all know Musk is a racist with little empathy for black people given the psychological cauldron of South African privilege in which he grew up, but what’s behind his anti-trans views specifically? After all, even some hardened bigots and ultra-conservatives are more broadly sympathetic to LGBTQ issues since it may actually affect them (like Dick Cheney or Musk’s old PayPal mafia friend Peter Thiel).
Why is Musk willing to make this one of the most prominent hills he’ll die on? I think it’s because one of Elon’s eldest kids is trans, and has said she no longer wants to be associated with Musk—effectively disavowing him.
I can guarantee you this has shaped his views on trans-issues more than any other thing, as he might honestly believe his kid has been brainwashed by the “woke” left to hate him instead of actually accepting his own actions and views have caused this estrangement.
Anecdotally, I have usually noticed there is some semi-personal reason whenever a prominent billionaire has a specific prejudice, usually involving being raised with “inherited hatred” (it’s rumored Trump’s father was in the KKK and espoused those views to his son, and it’s much more than a rumor that the Koch Brothers were raised by a father that co-founded the John Birch Society) or perhaps hating something they truly are–like some of the most homophobic people secretly being gay. Interestingly, J.K. Rowling has made much about being a biological woman, but chose a male pen name for her Coroman Strike novels. Hmmm…