These days, scrolling through Elon Musk’s feed is something of a choose-your-own-adventure into the id of the internet: sometimes a glimpse of genuine engineering exuberance, other times a detour into conspiracy alley. The latest? Musk, whose misadventures on X have made as many headlines as his rockets, has now boosted a social media screed effectively describing women as objects—specifically, as commodities “built to be traded.”
Trading Cards, But Make It Patriarchy
According to a report from HuffPost, Musk—who has a staggering 223 million followers, a figure noted by the outlet—reshared an anonymous post asserting women are “built to be traded to another tribe (or captured).” The post’s justifications are as odd as they are unsettling: it claims such “trading” keeps women safe because they are “physically weak,” and that women naturally slide into new cultures for their own protection. HuffPost recounts how the anonymous account further argued that this adaptation explains why women allegedly conform to dominant (specifically, white, male-led) cultures, crowning the take with the suggestion that “white men” should be the ones reminding women of their place—because, in the post author’s own words, “the alternative is not so gentle.”
If you’re waiting for a punchline, there isn’t one. Just a retweet from Musk and a lot of uneasy echoes from anthropology’s long-discredited ideas. It’s a strange moment when an internet billionaire shines his spotlight on fringe takes that might otherwise stay in the digital backwaters.
The line of reasoning is outlined in Mediaite’s summary, which detailed how the post launched into a pseudo-anthropological explanation, asserting that women eventually become matriarchs upholding the dominant culture within their new social group—an assertion that seems recycled from the weirder side of forgotten anthropology textbooks.
A Pattern, Not a Bug
Providing the broader context, Mediaite also reports that this retweet didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Earlier that day, Musk replied to a user’s question, “Why do liberal white women hate white people so much?” with his own speculation: “They’ve been programmed to do so by their teachers and the media.” The DrInsensitive account then jumped in to offer the now-notorious theory about women, trading, and cultural conformity. HuffPost documents that Musk’s apparent approval came in the form of a retweet—further elevating these peculiar and regressive notions before his massive audience.
For those keeping score at home, that’s: a question about social programming, an answer pointing at teachers and media, topped off with a thread about women as tradable commodities. You have to wonder—does Musk actually buy into these old-school, anthropological curiosities, or is it more about stirring the pot?
The Bizarre Becomes Routine
Let’s take a step back and ask: does spotlighting this kind of content merely reflect Musk’s freewheeling ethos, or does it risk seeding genuinely harmful ideas in the mainstream? The HuffPost article highlights that this isn’t Musk’s first foray into platforming outlandish or, frankly, reactionary ideas. Sometimes, the line seems blurry between signal-boosting fringe curiosities and lending real credibility to them through sheer repetition—or sheer reach.
It’s also worth pausing on just how odd this blend of online anthropology and social commentary really is. Anthropological theories likening women to tradable goods have long since been refuted (not to mention relegated to museum curiosity cabinets). When such notions resurface under the world’s brightest digital spotlight, it’s hard not to marvel—does the past ever truly stay buried on the internet? And why do these ideas keep boomeranging back, like a trivia fact nobody actually asked for?
Signal, Not Noise
In the meme-spattered wilds of X, most people would scroll past a post suggesting women should be “reminded” of their whiteness by white men—perhaps muttering about recycled history and old, bad ideas. But when Musk, whose every online move sends ripples across the tech and media landscape, throws it into the global conversation, it shifts from background oddity to signal—one that’s tough to ignore.
HuffPost underscores that, intentional or not, Musk’s actions might serve to normalize this brand of faux-historical misogyny. It’s a bizarre twist: a man building rockets for Mars using his platform to recycle social theories that wouldn’t be out of place in a particularly odd museum exhibit.
And here’s the real curiosity—why do ideas like this, so at odds with modern science and common sense, keep surfacing in public discourse? Is this just another wry entry in the annals of billionaire internet behavior, or does it say something about the weird persistence of long-debunked beliefs? Is the internet age simply better at dusting off the old and presenting it as new?
Maybe the archive never closes, after all. Even stranger: sometimes, it’s the world’s loudest voices reaching deepest into the stacks.
