Tweet Accusing Elon Musk of Having 'Gender Affirming Surgery' Goes Viral

A Twitter user has used Elon Musk's stance on free speech to mock him regarding his alleged cosmetic surgeries.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last week and promised to allow some accounts previously banned from the site to return, vowing to the comeback of free speech.

Some Twitter users capitalized on Musk's comments about free speech to poke fun at the Tesla founder, including gamer Kacey Tron, who suggested he had undergone gender-affirming surgery.

"When Elon took over Twitter, I saw various news reports of him wanting to review and modify Twitter's harassment policy. This, in consideration with other comments he's made about transpeople in the past, I just wanted to shed some light on the hypocrisy and on the harmful rhetoric directed towards trans people," Tron told Newsweek.

She posted a side-by-side photo of Musk around 2002 when he bought Paypal from eBay for $1.5 billion and then a more recent photo when he walked the red carpet at the 2016 Met Ball in New York.

The older photo showed Musk with a clearly balding head, while the image of him 14 years later showed he had a voluminous head of hair without a receding hairline.

Tron captioned the post: "Elon Musk has had more gender-affirming surgeries than most trans people.

"I'm not trying to upset the fanboys, just simply exercising my freedom of speech. So glad that I can state my opinions without having to worry about triggered snowflakes."

Musk has been rumored to have had a number of cosmetic procedures, including hair transplants, but he has never confirmed this publicly.

Newsweek reached out to Musk's representatives for comment.

Tron told Newsweek why she thinks Musk's alleged cosmetic procedures are examples of gender-affirming surgery, which is commonly more associated with transgender people.

In this context, it refers to Musk's alleged attempts to treat his receding hairline to more align with his idea of what a man should look like.

"To me, gender-affirming surgery is any surgery that can make an individual feel more comfortable in their own body, whether it be to feel more masculine or feminine," Tron explained.

"Breast implants are a great example of a cosmetic surgery that both trans and ciswomen will get to feel more comfortable in their femininity. This would also apply to men who get surgery to fix their hair and jawline."

Musk has a history of making controversial comments about trans people, including once saying "pronouns suck."

He tweeted on December 16, 2020: "I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare."

Then a few weeks into the war between Ukraine and Russia, he made a joke about trans people and the conflict.

"Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black Ukraine guy [falling] in love with a transgender Russian soldier," he tweeted in March 2022.

One of his oldest children, Vivian Musk, 18, petitioned a court in April this year to change their name and get a new birth certificate after transitioning.

The court documents showed Vivian also requested the name change because they longer want to "live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."

Musk has long described himself as a "free speech absolutist," but Tron believed that he had a very different concept of free speech compared to most people.

"I believe that what defines 'free speech' varies depending on the individual. For Elon, it appears that 'free speech' means that one is free to spread misinformation and use hate speech," she said.

"Freedom of speech means that you have the right to speak freely, yet it does not free you from the accountability of what you say. It would be great if he were as concerned about the use of hate speech as he was about people's right to spam it on Twitter."

After his acquisition of Twitter, Musk reached out to advertisers to confirm his commitment to free speech.

"It is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square," he wrote. "That said, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all."

Musk has been inundated with questions as to whether he would overturn former U.S president Donald Trump's ban from Twitter.

Even though Musk has not confirmed whether he will reinstate Trump's account, he did tweet that there will need to be a clear policy in place before any of the suspended accounts can make a return.

"Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on the platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks," he wrote on Wednesday.

Twitter announced it had permanently suspended Trump's account on January 8, 2021, to prevent the "risk of further incitement of violence."

The still incumbent president had tweeted support for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

"In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action," Twitter's statement read at the time.

"Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.

"However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things."