Photo: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
On Monday, Elon Musk took a break from mocking victims of nonconsensual porn by threatening to sue his alleged baby mama Ashley St. Clair for custody of her 1-year-old son. Musk’s comments were prompted by St. Clair apologizing for views she’s expressed about transgender people, which Musk apparently took to mean that St. Clair “might transition” the child.
St. Clair did not indicate anything of the sort, but she did publish a tweet suggesting she felt remorse about some of her previous transphobic views. St. Clair, a 27-year-old right-wing influencer and author of the 2022 children’s book Elephants Are Not Birds, which mocks the concept of gender fluidity, came forward last year to claim that she had conceived a son with Musk and that he allegedly offered her $15 million to stay silent about his paternity. In response, Musk publicly questioned the child’s paternity, though he did acknowledge sending St. Clair child support. “I don’t know if the child is mine or not, but am not against finding out. No court order is needed,” he tweeted this past March. “Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year.”
Since then, St. Clair appears to have had a change of heart about both Musk and her own right-wing stances. Last week, she spoke out against Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, which has been accused of generating sexualized photos of women and girls on X without their consent. In an interview with The Cut, she accused Musk of turning a blind eye to the issue and has since accused X of retaliating against her by revoking her X Premium status.
Then on Sunday, St. Clair took to X to recant her previous transphobic views. “Dark woke cause the other option is bootlicking feds + pedophiles + nerds,” she wrote before a follower asked her how she feels about trans people “in the wake of noticing how the far right truly is.”
“I feel immense guilt for my role. And even more guilt that things I have said in the past may have caused my son’s sister more pain,” St. Clair replied, seemingly referring to Musk’s trans daughter, Vivian Wilson, who has publicly spoken out against her father. “Idrk how to make amends for many of these things but I have been trying incredibly hard privately to learn + advocate for those within the trans community that I’ve hurt.”
Though nothing about St. Clair’s tweets indicated that she was anything but remorseful over her previous comments, Musk apparently took them to mean something else entirely. “I will be filing for full custody today, given her statements implying she might transition a 1-year-old boy,” the famously transphobic Musk said of a child he had publicly denied parenting just nine months prior. It’s unclear whether Musk actually plans to follow through on that threat, but considering countries are reportedly considering banning his generative AI for producing nonconsensual explicit images, it’s safe to say he has bigger fish to fry.
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