Actor Marlon Wayans has criticised Tesla and X/Twitter CEO Elon Musk for disowning his transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson.
Wayans – who has a trans son named Kai – spoke about Musk’s treatment of his daughter on the Club Shay Shay podcast. He said he owns a Tesla that he is “about to drive over a cliff” over Musk’s behaviour.
“I don’t like what he be saying about his trans child,” Wayans explained on the podcast. “You don’t treat them babies like that, you don’t disown your baby. Love your child!”
He continued: “l’m sad to say some parents, some family members, and some people it’ll take them a lifetime. They’ll never get to that magical place that I’m at which is just acceptance. Still my child. That’s my baby.”
Wayans announced last year that he had a trans child; he has been publicly supportive of Kai and has used his platform to frequently support the LGBTQ+ community.
@clubshayshaypod“I have a #Tesla that I’m about to drive over a cliff. I don’t like what #elonmusk be saying about his trans child. It makes me mad. You don’t treat those babies like that. You don’t disown your baby. Love your child! … I’m sad to say some parents, some family members, and some people it’ll take them a lifetime. They’ll never get to that magical place that I’m at which is just acceptance. Still my child. That’s my baby.” – #marlonwayans #trans
♬ original sound – Club Shay Shay
The actor spoke too about Kai’s transition too, saying that while being “the last to know” about the change was “hard” on him, it wasn’t important in the bigger picture of things.
“As hard as it was, I think that it’s not important. It’s important what you went through; the five steps of grief, but I think it’s important that you get to acceptance. And I’m proud to say it took me a week – but it felt like forever.”
Musk’s daughter Vivian, meanwhile, criticised her father recently after he said she had been “killed by the woke mind virus”. Vivian also received support from Musk’s ex-partner, Grimes.
During a recent interview Musk took part in with the conservative commentator and psychologist Jordan Peterson, the tech mogul spoke about his estranged daughter, whom he repeatedly deadnamed and misgendered.
Wilson, 20, officially changed her name in 2022 to reflect her gender identity as a trans woman and to take her mother’s surname.
Musk claimed in the interview that he had been “tricked” into signing the paperwork to allow Vivian to use puberty blockers, which he described as “actually just sterilisation drugs”. He added that his “son” had been “killed” by the “woke mind virus” and that he had “lost his son”.
He later reiterated the claims on X/Twitter, adding that Vivian was “born gay and slightly autistic, two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria. I knew that from when he was about four years old and he would pick out clothes for me to wear like a jacket and tell me it was ‘fabulous!’, as well as his love of musicals & theatre. But he was not a girl.”
Elon Musk – CREDIT: Marc Piasecki/Getty Images
In July, Wilson responded to the comments on Threads. “There’s a lot of stuff I need to debunk which I will get to don’t worry, but I want to start with what I find the funniest which is the notorious ‘slightly autistic’ tweet,” she wrote.
“This is entirely fake,” Wilson added in a second post. “Like, literally none of this ever happened. Ever. I don’t even know where he got this from. My best guess is that he went to the Milo [Yiannopoulos] school of gay stereotypes, just picked some at random and said ‘eh- good enough’ in a last-ditch attempt to garner sympathy points when he is so obviously in the wrong even in his own fucking story.”
Wilson went on to assert that “I disowned him, not the other way around,” referring to the moment she legally changed her name to have ‘Musk’ replaced. She also replied to Musk’s claim that she had been “killed” by saying, “I look pretty good for a dead bitch”.
Wilson also responded to Musk’s comments about loving “musicals and theatre”. “This entire thing is completely made up and there’s a reason for this,” she added. “He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there, and in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.”
Wilson has since given an interview to NBC News, in which she reiterated her stance on the situation.
“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go, unchallenged,” she said. “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.”
She recalled one particularly traumatic incident from her childhood. “I was in fourth grade. We went on this road 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 yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” Wilson said. “It was cruel.”
Musk’s former partner Grimes has also appeared to add her support to Wilson. Writing on X, she said: “I love and am forever endlessly proud of Vivian.”
Back in July, Musk said that he was moving SpaceX and X out of California because of new laws that had been brought by Governor Gavin Newsom in to protect trans students.
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