Elon Musk is a boob. The brash billionaire can also be, as he can’t cease telling the world, embarrassingly obsessive about breasts – a lot in order that final yr he painted over the “W” on the Twitter signal on the San Francisco headquarters in order that it learn “Titter”. This belaboured joke was a very long time within the making: days earlier than providing to purchase Twitter in April 2022, he tweeted a ballot: “Delete the w in Twitter?” It’s extremely doable that Musk spent $44bn on the social media platform simply in order that he may sooner or later flip this very silly gag into actuality.
This wasn’t the primary time he’d publicly sniggered “Haha, feminine anatomy is hilarious!” like a dimwitted schoolboy. In 2021 he joked about beginning a college known as the Texas Institute of Expertise & Science. Gettit? It’s a naughty acronym. Hilarious! Certainly, this explicit joke by no means appears to get previous for the 52-year-old. Earlier this yr, he tweeted “Boobs simply rock, it’s a truth,” alongside a meme of a person distracted by a lady’s cleavage.
An terrible lot of individuals appear to dismiss Musk’s juvenile behaviour and relentless innuendo as innocent excessive jinks. However that is fallacious: his misogyny issues. Musk heads a number of influential corporations. His behaviour, it appears cheap to imagine, has a direct influence on their working environments. If the large boss thinks it’s acceptable to be crude and misogynistic in public, what message does that ship to his workers?
Quite a few lawsuits in opposition to Musk and his corporations appear to carry the reply. In 2021, for instance, simply weeks after the billionaire’s “Texas Institute of Expertise” quip, a Tesla manufacturing facility employee known as Jessica Barraza filed a criticism alleging the automotive firm had a “pervasive tradition of sexual harassment … together with frequent groping on the manufacturing facility flooring.” Barraza claimed she was regularly propositioned and topic to feedback like “Take a look at these titties” and “She’s acquired desserts”. Barraza is only one of various former Tesla staff who’ve filed sexual harassment lawsuits in opposition to the Musk-led firm.
These points aren’t confined to Tesla. Final week SpaceX (the entrepreneur’s rocket firm) and Musk have been sued by eight engineers who mentioned they have been illegally fired in 2022 for elevating issues about alleged sexual harassment and discrimination in opposition to ladies. The plaintiffs allege that they skilled harassing feedback from co-workers that “mimicked Musk’s [Twitter] posts” and created a hostile work atmosphere. The courtroom filings declare Musk additionally participated in a video making mild of sexual misconduct which, inter alia, demonstrated the “appropriate” strategy to spank a co-worker. “Musk trumpets SpaceX because the chief to a courageous new world of house journey, however runs his firm in the dead of night ages – treating ladies as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra measurement,” the criticism proclaims. Tesla and SpaceX deny any wrongdoing.
The SpaceX lawsuit coincided with a brand new Wall Road Journal report in regards to the entrepreneur’s behaviour headlined “Musk’s boundary-blurring relationships with ladies at SpaceX.” These blurred boundaries being that he, to cite the piece: “had intercourse with an worker and a former intern, and requested a lady at his firm to have his infants”. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president mentioned the Journal’s reporting doesn’t mirror SpaceX’s tradition, including “Elon is among the greatest people I do know.”
Shotwell might protest that she is aware of a really totally different Musk, however none of those new allegations appear at odds with the general public persona Musk has crafted for himself: that of a intercourse pest who’s obsessive about breeding. That is the man, in any case, who fathered two youngsters with a prime government at his synthetic intelligence firm Neuralink.
For some time now I’ve (naively) assumed that Musk’s shenanigans would ultimately meet up with him. Certainly no one may go on treating this man, who appears to pleasure himself in being a raging misogynist, like a genius? Certainly shareholders of his firm may realise {that a} man who appears to suppose that fifty% of the inhabitants are nothing however strolling wombs may not be the most important enterprise mind? However, like his pal Donald Trump, nothing Musk does appears to make a little bit of distinction to his cult-like followers or the broader enterprise neighborhood. Tesla shareholders lately authorised a $45bn (£35.3bn) pay deal for Musk: the largest-ever compensation bundle granted to an government at a US-listed firm. The ethical to this puerile story? Misogyny pays.
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