Elon Musk has advised JK Rowling to curtail her tweets about transgender issues and instead focus on sharing more “interesting and positive content.”
Musk made the suggestion through a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), which he had purchased in 2022.
Responding to Rowling’s post from a month earlier, which discussed the definition of a woman but has since been deleted, the tech billionaire unexpectedly replied to the Harry Potter author that she should post more “interesting and positive content on other matters”.
Despite Musk having his own history of controversial statements about transgender rights, including criticisms of pronoun usage and labelling the term ‘cisgender’ as ‘heterophobic’, his comments have seen mixed responses from users, with some finding humour in his reply, while others have hit out at Musk accusing him of being a hypocrite.
Since taking over X, Musk has initiated multiple policy changes on the platform, which trans rights activists say are scaling back protections for transgender users, including the removal in April 2023 of a policy that previously shielded transgender individuals from being deliberately misgendered or deadnamed.
Musk, who says he only purchased X to uphold free speech in the United States, has also expressed reluctance to censor tweets deemed ‘offensive’ or ‘hateful’; however, he has stated that any illegal content would be removed.
