The companies led by the boob-obsessed billionaire have faced a number of sexual harassment lawsuits. Why do his cult-like followers still consider him a genius?

Elon Musk is a boob. The brash billionaire is also, as he can’t stop telling the world, embarrassingly obsessed with breasts – so much so that last year he painted over the “W” on the Twitter sign at the San Francisco headquarters so that it read “Titter”. This belaboured joke was a long time in the making: days before offering to buy Twitter in April 2022, he tweeted a poll: “Delete the w in Twitter?” It’s highly possible that Musk spent $44bn on the social media platform just so that he could one day turn this very stupid gag into reality. This wasn’t the first time he’d publicly sremoveded “Haha, female anatomy is hilarious!” like a dimwitted schoolboy.In 2021 he joked about starting a university called the Texas Institute of Technology & Science. Gettit? It’s a naughty acronym. Hilarious! Indeed, this particular joke never seems to get old for the 52-year-old. Earlier this year, he tweeted “Boobs just rock, it’s a fact,” alongside a meme of a man distracted by a woman’s cleavage.

An awful lot of people seem to dismiss Musk’s juvenile behaviour and incessant innuendo as harmless high jinks. But this is wrong: his misogyny matters.