Will Elon Musk’s incessant innuendo ever meet up with him?

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 12 months 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 in the future 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 referred to as the Texas Institute of Expertise & Science. Gettit? It’s a naughty acronym. Hilarious! Certainly, this specific joke by no means appears to get outdated for the 52-year-old. Earlier this 12 months, he tweeted “Boobs simply rock, it’s a truth,” alongside a meme of a person distracted by a woman’s cleavage.

An terrible lot of individuals appear to dismiss Musk’s juvenile behaviour and relentless innuendo as innocent excessive jinks. However that is unsuitable: his misogyny issues. Musk heads a number of influential firms. His behaviour, it appears affordable to imagine, has a direct affect on their working environments. If the massive boss thinks it’s acceptable to be crude and misogynistic in public, what message does that ship to his workers?

Quite a few lawsuits towards Musk and his firms 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 referred to as Jessica Barraza filed a criticism alleging the automobile firm had a “pervasive tradition of sexual harassment … together with frequent groping on the manufacturing facility ground.” Barraza claimed she was ceaselessly propositioned and topic to feedback like “Have a look at these titties” and “She’s obtained desserts”. Barraza is only one of plenty of former Tesla staff who have filed sexual harassment lawsuits towards the Musk-led firm.

These points aren’t confined to Tesla. Final week SpaceX (the entrepreneur’s rocket firm) and Musk had been sued by eight engineers who stated they had been illegally fired in 2022 for elevating issues about alleged sexual harassment and discrimination towards girls. The plaintiffs allege that they skilled harassing feedback from co-workers that “mimicked Musk’s [Twitter] posts” and created a hostile work surroundings. The court filings declare Musk additionally participated in a video making mild of sexual misconduct which, inter alia, demonstrated the “right” method to spank a co-worker. “Musk trumpets SpaceX because the chief to a courageous new world of house journey, however runs his firm at midnight ages – treating girls 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 Street Journal report in regards to the entrepreneur’s behaviour headlined “Musk’s boundary-blurring relationships with girls at SpaceX.” These blurred boundaries being that he, to cite the piece: “had intercourse with an worker and a former intern, and requested a girl at his firm to have his infants”. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president stated the Journal’s reporting doesn’t mirror SpaceX’s tradition, including “Elon is without doubt one of the greatest people I do know.”

Shotwell could protest that she is aware of a really completely 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 spite of everything, who fathered two children with a high government at his synthetic intelligence firm Neuralink.

For some time now I’ve (naively) assumed that Musk’s shenanigans would finally meet up with him. Certainly no person 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 assume that fifty% of the inhabitants are nothing however strolling wombs won’t 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 group. Tesla shareholders lately permitted 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.