Elon Musk recently made some people angry when he said that people shouldn’t “force” their pronouns on other people.
Over the weekend, the 51-year-old CEO of Tesla got into an online debate with retired US Navy Captain and former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly about the importance of pronouns, or in this case, the lack of them.
All of this started when Musk tweeted that his pronouns are “Prosecute/Fauci.”
This is probably a reference to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who runs the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Fauci was the top doctor at the White House.
My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
Let’s just say that people didn’t like the first tweet all that much.
Please sell @Twitter then delete your account,
urged one user.
Mr. Musk – That is an extremely juvenile + disrespectful tweet. As someone who commands a huge public platform [and] controls billions of dollars in personal [and] corporate resources, you might use this moment to consider how to interact with others in a more substantive [and] respectful way,
added another.
But when former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly decided to answer the billionaire’s controversial tweet, things started to heat up.
Elon, please don’t mock and promote hate toward already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence members of the #LGBTQ+ community,
he said.
They are real people with real feelings. Furthermore, Dr Fauci is a dedicated public servant whose sole motivation was saving lives.
Even though Kelly’s response was better received online, it looks like the “Chief Twit” wasn’t going to let him have the last word.
Elon Musk gave Kelly a long public response in which he said that he “strongly disagrees” with Kelly’s opinion and that people shouldn’t “force” their pronouns on others.
I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.
He continued:
As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo.
This just made other healthcare workers want to help.
Peter Hotez, who is the head of the National School of Tropical Medicine, said that Elon Musk was spreading “false information.”
For the record: Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong, except serve our nation,
he wrote in a series of tweets addressing the debate.
In the meantime, Mr. Musk should know that 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives from Covid due to this kind of antiscience rhetoric and disinformation. Elon, I’m asking you to take down this Tweet.
In a different tweet later, Hotez also said:
Bottom line: antiscience aggression and disinformation was a leading cause of death in the United States in 2021 and 2022. Antiscience aggression kills more Americans than just about any other societal force.
For the record: Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong, except serve our nation. In the meantime, Mr. Musk should know that 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives from Covid due to this kind of antiscience rhetoric and disinformation. Elon, I’m asking you to take down this Tweet https://t.co/t3ffWQsXnb
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) December 11, 2022
Are we shocked by what Musk said? Actually, no.
The founder of SpaceX has always made it clear that he doesn’t like pronouns.
He couldn’t have said it any more clearly than he did in this tweet from 2020, which he sent in a very grown-up way:
Pronouns suck.
Pronouns suck
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2020
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s the owner of Twitter…
