I’m updating this post to include Dwyane Wade’s recent appearance on Ellen, where he speaks about Zaya’s coming out to him:
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28681410/dwyane-wade-supports-daughter-gender-identity
Previous Post (updated with name change from Zion to Zaya):
I don’t know anything about the sprotsball but I do have an idea of what loving and supportive parents should look like. It seems that Dwayne Wade (a retired sprotsball player) and his wife, Gabrielle Union-Wade (actor, author) are doing it right. They have a combined 30 million(!) Instagram followers and have been using their platform to show support for their 12 year-old, Zaya.
When Zaya was pictured wearing a crop top in a family Thanksgiving photo, Wade defended her against all the rude and horrible comments.
Dwyane Wade Had the Best Response to the “Hate” Over His Childs Appearance on Thanksgiving
Later in the holiday season, Wade announced that the family would be using she/her/hers pronouns for Zaya: “I’ve watched my son from day one become into who she now eventually has come into. Nothing changes my love. Nothing changes my responsibilities. The only thing I got to do is get smarter and educate myself more. And that’s my job.”
Per WAPO: Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union’s Simple, Open-Armed Act of Parental Love
The whole podcast is here.
Way to go fam!
I’m still upset with Mr. Wade for eliminating my Pitt Panthers from the NCAA tournament in 2003, but I can officially forgive him for that based on this.
This is how you role model.
Not just role model, but role model publicly as a public personae.
There was a report on NPR a few weeks ago that had a mother talking openly and candidly about coming to terms with the fact that her child was transgender. I forget a lot of the specifics of the story, hence my lack of pronouns, but what stuck with me was the mother saying, through tears, that it was a matter of life and death for her child. That she’d looked at all of the statistics, and saw her once-vibrant and full-of-life child retreating into a shell of depression, and knew that she would lose her child if she didn’t make some serious changes.
Gabrielle Union and D. Wade are awesome people for doing this publicly. Especially when they talk about how they’re still working on it. If even one kid sees their support and feels comfort, or one parent changes the sort of person they are, it’s worth it.
I genuinely do not understand people; I had to really search that photo of a beautiful family for the problem. It was only upon reading I finally noticed the glimpse of belly and thought ‘so what?’ It doesn’t look tacky or obscene.
Then I read further, and people were picking at the child’s nails and scrunchy. A scrunchy!
Why would you see anything other the beautiful, happy family pictured in that photo?