Elon Musk was challenged about his pronoun comments by a Tesla investor who has a trans child

• A Tesla investor challenged Musk on his jokes about pronouns in a Twitter Space on Thursday.
• The user said Musk's jokes made them feel uncomfortable about owning a Model X.
• Musk said he felt like the use of pronouns were "a shield to allow people to be assholes."

A Tesla investor with a trans child challenged Elon Musk over his comments about pronouns in a tense discussion on Thursday.

In a Twitter Space for Tesla investors where Musk was a speaker, a participant asked him about his recent language but got a cagey response.

The user, Earl of FrunkPuppy, told Musk that while he was still passionate about Tesla and owned shares in the company, he felt disenfranchised by the CEO's recent behavior.

Earl of FrunkPuppy said they had a daughter as well as a trans child who had both previously been excited about owning a Model X, but now had "mixed feelings."

"It's not always directly related to what you say, but kind of some of the opinions or attention you draw to things like pronouns or something like that. And it's just, it's sad for me to watch that happen," the user said.

The person also said that as a shareholder they were concerned that Musk was alienating moderates. Musk responded: "I'm not going to sort of suppress my views just to boost the stock price."

The moderator then asked: "Elon, you don't hate trans people, do you?"

Musk said he did not, but added: "It does bother me that people will use pronouns to just be super judgmental. To me feels like a lot of these things are a shield that allow people to be assholes, like a moral shield that where they just give them an excuse to be an asshole and that's, that's what that bothers me."

The investor pushed back on Musk's comments and said it felt like he was "punching down to a really marginalized group" with his comments about pronouns.

"My kid is just trying to have like their pronoun used in school and stuff and it's like, you know, then you have this really rich popular person like crapping on pronouns," the user said, before being cut off by Musk who asked the moderator to move on to the next question.

—🐶 Earl of FrunkPuppy 🐶 (@28delayslater) December 23, 2022

Musk has often said he wanted to fight a "woke mind virus" he argued was negatively affecting public discourse. That appeared to include mocking the use of pronouns by mostly liberal users in their social media handles.

In 2020, he tweeted: "I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic [sic] nightmare."

His latest joke about pronouns involved Musk tweeting: "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci," in reference to calls from right-wing sources to arrest Dr Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the US President, for his role in the imposing COVID-19 quarantines.