That time Elon got pissed at me

And what it revealed about the connection between capitalism and so-called "traditional masculinity."

Feb 12, 2025

Let me take off my therapist hat for a moment and go back to 2018, when I was a writer in the labor union movement. I wrote about Elon Musk’s plan to build an underground train from downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport, and how it was—like many of Musk’s endeavors—a massive giveaway of public dollars to the rich.

Musk didn’t like that. He responded (on Twitter before he bought it): “Btw, if anyone else wants to build this tunnel, please do so. It’s a lot of work.”

That tweet has been on my mind the past few weeks as Musk and Trump have attempted to destroy the parts of the government meant to help people who aren’t rich.

Apparently, I wasn’t special. According to a former employee, Musk has a tendency to “read an obscure critical post by, like, some Belgian blogger at 3 in the morning and wake up people on the comms team and demand this person be crushed.” Over a five-day period last year, he tweeted 389 times, including attacking the Brazilian government for attempting to censor hate speech and NPR for accurately reporting on his company Tesla’s struggles.

It’s just a few words online, but I think Musk’s outburst at me reveals a lot about the connection between capitalism and so-called “traditional masculinity.”

I say “so-called” because what we think of as masculinity isn’t actually all that traditional.

Aggression, dominance, emotional restraint, a focus on providing and protecting. Thinking of these as things “real men” do and women don’t is a relatively recent—“modern”—shift in society’s ideas about gender, only a few hundred years old.

The truth is men are capable of the full range of human abilities and experiences. It’s just that things like being emotionally vulnerable, asking for help, and nurturing relationships were shamed out of those of us who were raised as boys. We were taught to value competition over collaboration. To be rational and logical rather than emotional. To tough it out on our own rather than ask for help. To judge ourselves for doing anything outside of these expectations as “soft,” “girly,” and “gay”—and therefore less valuable than other men and less desirable to women, who we are forced to rely on for all of our emotional needs.

We were taught these things because the rich and powerful in our capitalist society rely on the exploitation of labor to be so rich and powerful. It’s basic math. They need workers to work for less pay than what the goods and services those workers produce can be sold for. They need those workers to be compliant and willing to work long hours outside the home (or remotely at home, as technology has advanced). They need them to compete against and not cooperate with other workers for (only slightly) higher pay and job opportunities. They need them to ignore the needs of their families, neighbors, and communities to put the needs of the job and company first.

Capitalist exploitation is how “traditional masculinity” was formed and shaped. Before a few hundred years ago, there were many ways of being a man across different societies across the world. But once the Elon Musks of 17^th and 18^th centuries started stealing and privatizing land (sound familiar?)—first in Western Europe and then everywhere—one version of masculinity became the norm and expectation. A version that supported the new system of capitalism and enriched the Musks and Trumps at the top.

Women were forced through their own process of whittling down what it means to be a woman. They were told to stay home—that it’s their natural, biological tendency to be more emotional and less rational, and therefore they should be compliant and focus on caring for children and others. Through the lens of capitalist exploitation, this makes perfect sense. With men working long hours in factories and fields, someone needed to be at home making sure the men could get back to work the next day and raising the next generation of workers.

The feminist scholar Silvia Federici wrote in a 1975 essay about this gendered division of labor: “[Women’s] minds, our bodies, and emotions have all been distorted for a specific function ... and then have been thrown back at us as a model to which we should all conform if we want to be accepted as women in this [capitalist] society.”

Again, our ideas about gender weren’t always like this. Federici writes elsewhere:

“In the [European] feudal village ... all work contributed to the family’s sustenance. Women worked in the fields, in addition to raising children, cooking, washing, spinning, and keeping an herb garden. Their domestic activities were not devalued and did not involve different social relations from those of men, as they would later, in [capitalism] when housework would cease to be viewed as real work."

Which brings me back to Musk’s tweet.

The dudes at the top rely on a few things to stay up there. They need other men to side with them rather than women and other marginalized genders. They need everyone to believe in those “traditional” ideas about gender so the exploitation can continue. They need white folks (the majority of Americans) to blame immigrants and people of color for our problems rather than them or the system they’ve rigged in their interest. They need all workers to think that the only way of improving our lives is to punch down at people below us for being “entitled” or “lazy.”

That’s why they put a lot of effort into the “culture wars.” They claim that what they’re doing is “a lot of work,” and only they have the discipline and work ethic to do it. They make fun of the sharing of preferred pronouns. They make a gesture resembling a Nazi salute, and instead of denying the connection, they mock the controversy. They amplify ideas like, “People who can’t defend themselves physically (women and low T men) parse information through a consensus filter for a safety mechanism...This is why a republic of high-status males is best for decision making.”

Meanwhile, behind that smokescreen meant to distract and divide us, they spend tons of money electing pro-corporate politicians to slash public programs and regulations, privatize public goods and services, and attack unions, the most powerful tool that workers have in a capitalist society.

I’d lost track of the Chicago tunnel project over the years and had to look up what happened. Nothing. No work was actually done. The project fell through after then-mayor of Chicago Rahm Emmanuel lost reelection. Like so many things Musk and Trump say they’re going to do, it was all talk, no action. But now they run the government and the most powerful military in the world. We have to see through their bullshit, stick together, and get them out.

(BTW,

J. P. Hill

has some great resources to join the fight at the bottom of this post.)

Now, a question for the comments below (or email me at jeremy@mohler.coach): How are you feeling about the past few weeks?