In a tweet that reads as a sample wrong answer to a mandatory quiz from your company’s HR department, Elon Musk responded to Taylor Swift’s Tuesday night endorsement of Kamala Harris by… *squints* threatening to impregnate her.
Let me back up! Shortly after Harris finished her first debate against former President Trump, Swift offered a long-awaited show of support for the vice president via an Instagram post of her holding one of her cats, a lengthy caption detailing why she’s supporting Harris, and a tongue-in-cheek sign-off alluding to JD Vance's now-famous label for women without kids: “With love and hope, Taylor Swift Childless Cat Lady.”
Minutes later, Musk, absentee father to nearly a dozen (known) children—including three children he shares with an executive at one of his companies—tweeted, “Fine Taylor, you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.” Excuse me while I vomit.
It’s pretty insane that the right has approximately one joke and it’s… sexual harassment. Here, we have the wealthiest man in the world, so peeved that a woman has chosen to wield her massive platform to go against his political agenda, that he’s attempting to punish her with sexualized public humiliation. But naturally, like Musk’s SpaceX rockets, this has backfired spectacularly, and other than the clusters of basement-dwelling Twitter Blue subscribers fake laughing in his replies, everyone else is gawking at what a massive creep he is.
He’s sexualizing her as a form of degradation and punishment for her endorsement of Harris. It is retaliatory sexual harassment. https://t.co/nOCA3nFczU
— Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) September 11, 2024
I don’t care to give Musk’s bizarre fertilization fantasy any additional oxygen, but, for no-particular-fucking-reason, it seems worth bumping some of his other, err, interactions—all unwanted—with women. Swift is actually just the latest woman Musk has nonconsensually solicited to make babies with him. In June, the Wall Street Journal reported on the disturbing case of at least one of Musk’s employees recounting how, in 2013, he repeatedly asked her to have children with him. The unnamed woman declined but remained at SpaceX, and her working relationship with Musk obviously “deteriorated,” per the Journal. Sources familiar with the woman’s story told the outlet that Musk went on to “[deny] the woman a raise” and “[complain] about her performance,” prompting her to exit the company soon thereafter. Surely that was all unrelated! Years later, in 2021, Musk had twins with employee Shivon Zillis, which he didn’t discuss with his then-partner Grimes. (He's currently fighting Grimes in custody court, as her family alleges Musk is withholding their kids from her.)
In addition to calling Musk’s tweet about Swift creepy, some have called it sexual harassment, which seems to be a favorite pastime of the Tesla CEO. The same Journal report detailed several inappropriate sexual relationships Musk initiated with employees, including a much younger woman who started working for him as his intern. But before that, two years ago, Business Insider reported on a settlement between Musk and a flight attendant he allegedly touched, harassed, and offered a horse in exchange for sex. Tesla employees have lodged several lawsuits against the company for fostering a culture of sexual harassment, with at least one woman naming Musk's highly visible inappropriate behavior as a driving force of this culture.
So, yes, Musk's tweet aimed at Taylor Swift was creepy—it’s also par for the extremely vile course of this man. Speaking of children, which Musk can’t seem to go two minutes without talking about, I strongly recommend keeping yours (and your womb) away from him.
