Elon Musk just (allegedly) had his thirteenth child with a fourth woman — a 26-year-old “conservative” influencer named Ashley St. Clair. In a past version of the “traditional family values” party, this might’ve been a career-ending event. Today, it hardly generates coverage. In this episode, Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub (of In Bed With The Right) help me make sense of the right’s impossibly contradictory code of sexuality: is MAGA the movement of the hot, virile new youth, or is it the movement attempting to ban contraception and abortion? Are women supposed to spit on that thang or dress modestly? And what does Elon’s public humiliation of Ashley St. Clair reveal about a woman’s place in the New Right? Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today's sponsors! Protect yourself online, wherever you go. Get a discount on NordVPN at https://www.nordvpn.com/fruity. Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at https://www.blueland.com/fruity. Me on Instagram. A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What sparked the conversation about Elon Musk and Ashley St. Clair?
The left doesn't want you to spit on that thing. Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity, the podcast where my philosophy on sex has always been the same. You should have as much of it as you want, especially if it's gay. Earlier this month, a 26-year-old semi-successful right-wing social media influencer named Ashley St. Clair made an announcement.
Ashley is perhaps best known for her anti-trans children's book called Elephants Are Not Birds, which, you guessed it, is about a young elephant who is tricked into thinking he can become a bird. Elephants Are Not Birds is published by Brave Books, a right-wing book publisher that, quote, "...partners with people of moral integrity to teach complex Christian and conservative values."
And so on Valentine's Day, just a few days ago, Ashley St. Clair's announcement to the world was this. Moira, would you like to read it so we can get like a woman?
The feminine touch. Yeah. Yeah. Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father. I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child's privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause. I intend to allow our child to grow in a normal and safe environment.
For that reason, I ask that the media honor our child's privacy and refrain from invasive reporting. And at the bottom it says... Media, Brian Gilclitch, Digital Strategy Limited. Brian at digitalstrategylimited.com.
That was really good. That was good. You're ready to play the Ashley St. Clair biopic.
Yes, absolutely. I'm gunning for that role.
This would be Elon Musk's 13th child with a total of four different women. Since the announcement, Ashley's become the subject of enormous waves of every possible reaction, from congratulations to just about everything you'd imagine the internet would have to say about a relatively obscure young woman who births a famous man's child out of wedlock.
And to be clear, I am no fan nor friend of Ashley St. Clair. But, you know, she seems to be going through a lot. And Elon has been quiet. Elon's only public acknowledgement of any of this so far has been in response to a tweet from longtime gay neo-Nazi Milo Yiannopoulos, who tweeted that Ashley, a 26-year-old, I'm 26. I'm 26. What am I doing?
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Chapter 2: How does the right-wing's sexual politics affect women?
I want to make my last little follow-up here. It's just that in the 2024 election, so many groups shifted more to the right with how they voted, and women, by and large, were among those groups. You described that the politics of sexual domination used to be stylized through this purity culture, where it's now being stylized through this, like, we must have as much sex as men want culture.
And how maybe now that the purity culture has been stripped away, that women might feel more freed by that style change. But I always like to end this podcast on like, here's what you should take away and like, perhaps to a voting booth with you. I think you would argue that women have not been freed by this change. And perhaps Ashley St. Clair could be the tragic mascot of that.
She's a really tragic case. The core lesson I take from this shift is that neither prohibited sex nor mandated sex are the source of freedom for women. What we actually have to do is imagine sexuality as something that somebody else doesn't get to control for you. or impose on you or forbid for you, right?
It has to be a more personal and more autonomous journey, for lack of a better word, you know? And so what I would encourage people to do is like start thinking about what like real, like truly free sexual expression would look like for women and really for all of us, right? One where we're not trying to comply with the demands of
any kind of like patriarchal or like sexually rapacious uh masculinity one where we're not trying to like avoid violence by like giving or abstaining from sex but one where we have a real genuine freedom to both say yes and to say no or to say what about something else That's kind of an unsatisfying, I hate it when left nonfiction ends this way.
It's like, well, we have to imagine differently, but we do. Because we don't have a model for sexuality outside these paradigms that hurt people.
No, 100%. I mean, it's like, I have a joke that's going to cheapen this so much.
Oh my God, go for it.
But I always have to end on a chuckle. But it's like, you literally, no one is being freed by the insistence that you spit on that thing. We need to imagine a world where we have the choice to spit on that thing or not spit on that thing and be liberated by that choice.
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