Telsa founder Elon Musk was widely panned on social media Wednesday after he appeared to complain that displaying pronouns in online bios is not visually appealing.
“I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare,” the billionaire tweeted in response to an article on the technology news website CleanTechnica.
The article called out Musk for a recent tweet in which he mocked the practice of displaying personal pronouns, which is done in an effort to be more inclusive of and show allyship with transgender and nonbinary people who may use different pronouns than the ones they were assigned at birth.
Earlier this year, Musk faced a firestorm after he tweeted “pronouns suck.” Among his critics was his girlfriend and co-parent of his child, the Canadian musician Grimes, who later deleted her tweet.
After the birth of their baby, X Ӕ A-12, in May, the couple said they would be following a gender-neutral parenting style in case their child does not identify with their birth gender.
Musk’s bizarre complaint was slammed online Wednesday, shooting his and his child’s names to the top of Twitter’s trending topics.
He was also criticized for following up with a tweet boasting that Tesla scored well on the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ corporate equality index in the past.
Activist and writer Charlotte Clymer, the former press secretary of the HRC, noted that comments like this from the company’s CEO could affect that score.
Here’s some of the other chat: