Chelsea Manning slams Elon Musk for posting 'transphobic' memes

Chelsea Manning has accused Elon Musk of "transphobic" tweets following reports of her dating his ex Grimes.

Back in March, the Tesla CEO's ex-partner Grimes announced the pair had welcomed their second child together. She then announced: "Me and E have broken up *again* since the writing of this article haha, but he’s my best friend and the love of my life, and my life and art are forever dedicated to The Mission now, I think Devin wrote that part of the story rly well. Sique - peace out."

According toPage Six, a source shared that Grimes and Manning were "getting serious" and have apparently even been living together in Austin, Texas. Since the report, Musk turned to Twitter with memes that made people believe that Musk's tweets were about Grimes and Manning dating.

During an interview with The Daily Beast on Monday, the activist would neither confirm nor deny that she and Grimes were at any time romantically linked. However, Manning slammed Musk for a tweet that "seemed transphobic."

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The meme-in-question read: "Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black Ukraine guy falls in love with a transgender Russian soldier."

She told the outlet: "The one thing I will say is: he around that time definitely seemed transphobic, and rumor or speculation aside, that’s off-limits. I’m going to respond to it. Any transphobia in a transphobic environment is not OK."

Manning, a former military analyst, spent seven years in custody for sharing military secrets with WikiLeaks. Before transitioning, she was known as Bradley Manning.

She was later released in 2017 when Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Manning refused to testify against Julian Assange and was jailed again in 2019. She was also fined $265,000 (£213,140).

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