The Dark Side of Evil Geniuses and Their Mini Mes
A friend of mine told me the other day that when her child is sick and she needs to take a day off work (because of course it is she who takes the day off work, not her husband) that it is easier for her to tell her boss that her washing machine has broken than to admit that her child is sick and she needs to take care of him.
If you are a mother, the chances are that you have been there, you have experienced that uncomfortable shaming due to the demands of your child, or you have tried to cover them to your own detriment. The message you try to portray is that yes, I birthed these dependent humans into this world, but no, they will not affect my ability to deliver to deadline, or impact on my work for you. And we tie ourselves in knots, or make ourselves sick doing so.
And so, it’s almost like some kind of sick joke that Elon Musk turned up for ‘work’ at the Oval Office this week with his four-year-old son in tow, not only that but he proceeded to conduct a press conference while the kid was on his shoulders. And everyone acted like this was completely normal?!
What have women (and children) sacrificed to be mothers? Well, often the first thing that had to go when we had kids was our career. Getting pregnant for me marked the end of my career as a national newspaper executive. Not just because I was left high and dry with my pregnancy and so I had no other pair of hands to rely on, but because it was known at that time (or at least whispered among women) that the newspaper I worked for ‘relieved’ women of their permanent contracted jobs after they’d had babies and instead put them on a freelance contract.
Can you imagine me sitting in features conference with my baby on my head, fingers that a few moments ago had been up his nose now probing my face as Elon had? Er, no.
And don’t forget that it was in my - and probably your - lifetime that women had to give up work even when they married, let alone got pregnant.
Yet the President of the United States sat like some dumb puppet while Musk’s kid strutted around his office wearing his thick gold chain round his neck and putting his grubby mitts all over that polished mahogany desk. Something that they would never tolerate if that were one of their female employee’s sons.
Women have had to fight for the right to keep their job and not be ‘relieved’ of it whilst on maternity leave. They’ve had to fight for the right to be able to breastfeed, or at least express the milk from their breasts when they return to work, and that is often because they are returning earlier than they would have preferred, so concerned that being on leave would damage their career ambitions.
How many women reading this now know that their career trajectory has either suffered or been obliterated by taking time off to have kids, while their husband’s has been unaffected? And so should we be grateful for Musk for taking his kid to work? Is he some shining beacon of paternity ambition that we could all learn from? No, he’s just another guy who understands that while there may be rules for women, there aren’t any for him.
Musk has not even been voted into that power position, he’s not even been chosen by the American public. Can you imagine if things had been different for Kamala Harris, if she had been sitting there behind an Oval Office desk letting some kid run wild while she was trying to get on with her job? What would the world’s press have said about her fitness to be the leader of the free world? And yet of course the guys get away with it, no-one bats an eyelid.
But what is that kid doing there in the first place? And why is he everywhere at the moment? Perhaps the answer is a little darker than we like to think. I was trying to remember in the Austin Powers film who Mini Me’s mother was? I can’t think. Perhaps that is because to power lords like Musk and Dr Evil (perhaps interchangeable) the actual women who birthed their children are irrelevant?
The mother of this child (his name is X by the way) is the singer Grimes, who has three children with Musk and separated from him a few years ago. What has since followed is a custody dispute between the two, Grimes filing hers in California where they lived and where the standard for child custody arrangements is 50/50 with both parents. And Musk filing his in a more conservative Texas where his business is based. A day after he filed his case Grimes tweeted and then deleted very quickly something that is quite disturbing ‘tell Elon to let me see my son or plz (sic) respond to my lawyer.’
Is this woman really being separated from her son? Even Turkish dictator Recep Tayip Erdoğan asked Musk where the boy’s mother was when he sat there bouncing him on his lap in a meeting. Musk told him: ‘We are separated and I take care of him mostly.’
Yet that since-deleted tweet from Grimes suggests this isn’t the cool arrangement he made out to Erdoğan.
Musk has called X (that’s his son by the way, not his business) his ‘cuteness prop’ or his ‘emotional support human’ because that’s why we have our kids, eh? Or at least that’s why Dr Evil did (for clarity, I’m talking about the Austin Powers character here).
But there is a theme here. A theme of men using children if not for their ‘emotional support’ but as both sword and shield. Last week I listened to Goodbye Mum, a shocking podcast about an undercover investigation into the family courts and specifically the accusations levelled by fathers of parental alienation. The podcast is the result of the hard work by brilliant journalists Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers. These two formidable women spend their working lives dedicated to exposing miscarriages of justice in the family courts, telling over and over the stories of women who have had their children removed from their custody for no better reason than spite on the part of the father.
I have followed their work for years, amplifying their stories where I can, and yet, even I was shocked by their latest investigation. Melanie Gill is an ‘expert’ who has been used in these cases of parental alienation time and time again, judges have taken her advice and her evidence has on many occasions ensured the removal of children from their mothers.
Anyone who has been through the family court system will know that it is now commonplace for a father to assert parental alienation especially where there is a counter allegation from the mother of domestic violence. And the reason for this is because it works – it ensures all the heat is off the father for his bad behaviour and suddenly it is the mother, the woman who thought she would find support within a legal framework, who is under suspicion. All her allegations against the father are put aside as ‘historical’ and seen as simply evidence of her scheming. If the child has been traumatised as a result of witnessing this violence their testimony is also put aside because it is assumed they have been groomed by the mother to recall it. This is even in cases where men have accepted cautions for violence, and police have attended homes. And so the only voice that is heard by the courts is that of the father, the very man who has a history of being violent and/or abusive.
As a result the advice these unregulated experts give to the court is to ‘correct’ the balance of the mother’s influence, and take the child from her care and put with its father – the person who often caused them harm in the first place.
Louise and Hannah were so concerned about how people like Melanie Gill were advising judges to remove children from their mothers that they went undercover with a male reporter, posing as a separated father, to contact her asking for advice. Her assertion, to paraphrase, was that feminism had gone too far. She said in a meeting that she did not know was being recorded that female judges were biased because ‘what they’re all concentrating on is domestic violence against women because the narratives spun internationally by radical feminism is that you know… the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, you know… that is now entrenched… and if you look at our government now that’s what they’re pushing as well, all men are violent, all women are victims…’
As Louise Tickle says in the podcast, feminism should not be on trial in the family court. But there it is. Has this ‘expert’ allowed herself to be influenced by her own political beliefs that feminism has gone too far? Does she see herself as some heroine righting this balance? Perhaps the mothers who have not been able to see their children as a result of her testimony might have something to say about that.
If you would like to listen to this podcast, and a warning that it is a distressing listen, you can do so here:
And I’ll admit here, I have skin in the game, but because we women who have been through the family court system are not allowed to talk about what has happened to us there, I shall have to wait until my daughter turns 18 to tell you.
But what we see here are men using their children as both sword and shield. What we see here are men making women suffer by using their children as pawns. And so when I saw Musk parading his son at political rallies, at the inauguration, in The White House Oval Office, bouncing him on his knee at a meeting with the Turkish leader, I wondered… why? For what reason? Perhaps he is simply a loving father? But I don’t think loving fathers separate children from their mothers, if there is any truth in that deleted tweet by Grimes. I also do not think that loving fathers drag the mother of their children through long and protracted legal battles for no reason (Musk has ensured we cannot see the court papers).
But then maybe that’s just me. Perhaps I’m completely wrong about Musk, perhaps his appearance with his son says something to fathers, that they can work, that they can still be parents, that the two worlds can collide and that they do not need to be ashamed of that. Perhaps, perhaps… perhaps Musk is a true believer in equality and women’s rights, perhaps he will restore Roe vs Wade, perhaps women have nothing to fear from this new government.
Or perhaps this week we had another flash of the dark side with X’s appearance at the Oval Office. Perhaps it wasn’t about us, perhaps it wasn’t a message for us at all, maybe it was a message for his mother.
Years ago some friends took me to a comedy club in London for my birthday, and we found ourselves in the company of a gathering of men from Fathers 4 Justice. (Does that organisation still exist? If not, do you remember it? It was a bunch of men who dressed as superheroes and performed stunts like climbing onto Buckingham Palace to try to persuade the courts to give them greater access to their children...) After the gig we all got chatting, and I remember thinking that this odious bunch of entitled, bitter, misogynistic man-children should be kept as far away from kids as possible. There wasn't a nurturing air about any of them, just an ominous sense that there were no limits to what they'd do to enact revenge on the women who'd dared to walk away from them.
I get that same air from Elon Musk. The White House is his Buckingham Palace, and his kid is the superhero prop he's using to gain attention. The terrifying difference is that he's not having to break in. He's being invited to use the world's highest office to broadcast his misogyny. And sadly, if we keep following this trajectory, the kid currently telling the president to shut his mouth and go away has every chance of ending up in the hot seat in the Oval Office himself. And yes, the actual woman who birthed this child, who seems to be crying out for access to him, has been deemed irrelevant. This is truly terrifying stuff.
I wish it was a message to men to take their parental responsibilities seriously. A positive move by a man showing the juggle of work and childcare. I think we all know that's unlikely to be the case. I actually find it really chilling. It makes me feel very uncomfortable. My worst fear is that it's the sending of a message (threat) to women, in particular mothers. Although I guess it's most likely just a latest play thing idea in the funhouse of horrors. Thank you. I've tentatively lined up the podcast to listen to.