(LifeSiteNews) — In a photo-filled spread reminiscent of Vanity Fair’s 2015 Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner cover story, on March 20 Teen Vogue published the second-ever press interview of 20-year-old Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s trans-identifying son. 

Wilson’s original name was Xavier Alexander Musk; he changed it in 2022. Wilson is his mother’s maiden name. The “special issue” includes photos featuring Wilson with long hair, painted nails, and feminine clothes. The cover features a close-up of Wilson with the title: “Meet Vivian Wilson.” 

The opening paragraph makes it crystal clear that this essay, like Jenner’s 2015 feature, constitutes a promotional piece for gender ideology: 

In many ways, Vivian Jenna Wilson is a lot like any other 20-year-old girl. The Los Angeles native spends hours a day on Discord with her friends; loves reading, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Chappell Roan; and she runs late – two full hours late, to be specific, for our scheduled Zoom meeting. Also like many 20-year-olds, she has a complicated relationship with her father…Wilson is, whether she likes it or not, the daughter of Elon Musk.

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That, of course, is the key question: Is Wilson, in fact, Elon Musk’s daughter? Or is Wilson Musk’s son? If we accept the claims of gender ideology, it is the former; if not, it is the latter.  

The focus of the essay is Wilson’s rift from her famous father, the richest man on earth and the man currently upending the U.S. government with his Department of Government Efficiency.  

But Wilson has been distancing himself from Musk for years. He came out as “trans” in 2020 and petitioned in 2022 to legally change his name to make the separation formal. Interestingly – and not incidentally – Wilson told Teen Vogue that he spent “all of COVID [lockdown] in online communities of queer people,” and the magazine noted that, like Musk, Wilson is “extremely online.”  

Wilson famously spoke out against his father for the first time in 2024, after Elon Musk spoke to Jordan Peterson about the pain he felt over his son’s “transition” and cited the event as a key motivation behind his commitment to “destroy the woke mind virus”: 

In his response to Musk, Wilson accused his father of being merely an attention seeker – but told Teen Vogue that he now rarely thinks about Musk. “The only thing that gets to live free in my mind is drag queens,” he stated. He is now living in Tokyo and studying French, Spanish, and Japanese, but is considering using his fame as the trans-identifying son of Elon Musk to go into modeling, Twitch streaming, or even reality TV.  

Of course, Wilson can’t stay out of politics – not entirely. Teen Vogue stated that Wilson is “horrified by the wave of anti-trans legislation targeting young people like her,” and cited the Trump administration’s pushback against the gender ideology entrenched in many American institutions. “I don’t feel like people realize that being trans is not a choice,” Wilson stated. He referred to the Trump administration as “cartoonishly evil.” 

Later in the interview, Wilson noted that defending transitions for children is one of his priorities: 

I do feel obligated to talk about trans issues. As someone who did transition as a minor, I feel like there’s so much villainization of that, and I would really like to raise awareness of the fact that trans care for minors, especially puberty blockers, is really, really important. So maybe stop demonizing these literal children or the people around these children who are just trying to help them to feel comfortable in their own skin. We’ve seen such vicious attacks on trans minors, and it’s really important that we protect our trans youth and do all that we can, especially in this increasingly hostile political landscape.

Wilson announced that he was trans, unsurprisingly, on Instagram – before he even told his mother. “She was very supportive of my transition,” Wilson said. “She is a published writer of supernatural romance fiction, which is where I get all my Vivian-isms, of being cringe and chronically online. When I came out to her, she was like, ‘Yeah, that figures.’ She kind of [pieced it together], so when I came out, she pretended to be slightly surprised for 30 seconds and then was like, ‘Yeah, honey. Okay.’” 

As for Musk: “No, he was not as supportive as my mom. First of all, I had not talked to him in months – in months – so I had to get f**king parental consent to get testosterone blockers and [hormone replacement therapy].” Musk’s dysfunctional and chaotic family life has, as I noted in an earlier column, has obviously had a profound effect on Wilson, as well. When Teen Vogue asked him if he is on good terms with his siblings, he responded:  

That’s a question. I will say I do not actually know how many siblings I have, if you include half-siblings. That’s just a fun fact. It’s really good for two truths and a lie. I found out about the Shivon Zilis thing the same time everyone else did. [A reference to recent news that Musk had a 14th child with Zilis.] I had no idea before that.

I found out about Grimes having a second child because a drag queen posted about it on Reddit. For a time, me and Grimes were not really in communication because I wasn’t in communication with anyone in that family, which still holds true. Tatianna from RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 2 and RuPaul’s Drag Race: All-Stars 2 tweeted, “[Not] Grimes popp[in] out another axolotl,” which made the front-page of the RuPaul’s Drag Race subreddit, which is how I found out about it. [Editor’s note: Wilson says she found out about Musk’s reported child with St. Clair the same way, joking, “If I had a nickel for every time I found out I had half-siblings through Reddit, I’d have two nickels.”] … I’ve seen X once, when he was very little.

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Wilson did decline to answer questions about Musk’s politics, except to insist that he had nothing to do with them and to emphasize that he hadn’t talked to his father since 2020. As for how his “transness” shapes his politics, he replied that it was inevitable: “If one of the sides of the political spectrum is like, ‘Trans people are men who are invading women’s spaces to whatever, and they’re trying to take away trans health care and trans rights and trying to minimize our visibility, and one of the sides is like, ‘No,’ [then] it kind of has to.” 

“My transness is not an asterisk to my personhood,” Wilson said. “I value the trans community so much. I value the queer community. I value trans history and queer history and queer culture and all of that to such a high degree, and I would never want to distance myself from any of that … I’m really interested in drag. I love drag. I have such an appreciation for the art form, and I would love to participate in the LA scene sometime. It’s on my bucket list to win a drag pageant.” 

The photos of Wilson remind me of publicity shots of Ellen “Elliot” Page. Page, too, insists that she is trans, and that transition made her happy. The photos, on the other hand, show a young woman with eyes brimming with sadness. 

Musk may be justifiably angry at the transgender movement – the “woke mind virus” – for his son’s decisions. But in Wilson’s agony over his IVF origins, the breakup of his family, and Musk’s morally chaotic family life, it is easy to discern where his pain and his confusion have come from.