Dwayne Wade is afraid for his son’s life, or as he would want you to say, his daughter.
At the TIME100 Summit on Tuesday, the three-time NBA Champion said that he fears that Zaya, his 15-year-old transgendered daughter, will live in a world where he will be hated.
“As blessed as it is for my daughter to have parents who can support her, I’m still afraid every moment she leaves the house,” he told CNN’s Poppy Harlow at the event. “And not just because of gun violence, but because of the way people perceive her in this world.”
Wade said in his emotionally-driven rant that he is afraid for Zaya because many states are banning transgendered women in sports or preventing doctors from giving gender-affirming care for youth (which are good things, by the way).
“To me, it’s a joke. This is our life. We live this. When you’re out there making rules, if you’re not experiencing this … Come and live a day with my daughter. Come and see how it is to walk through this world as her,” Wade said.
Wade has described Zaya as being the “leader” of the family in his journey form boy to girl, which began when he was three. According to Wade, that was when Zaya knew he was transgender.
"Zaya knew two things: she knew straight and she knew gay. But Zaya started doing more research. She was the one who sat down with us as a family and said, 'Hey, I don't think I'm gay,’” Wade said in 2020. And she went down the list and said, 'This is how I identify myself. This is my gender identity. I identify myself as a young lady,'" he said.
This raises so many things that went wrong for Wade on his parenting journey.
First of all, a three year old is barely in any position to be taking care of their own basic needs, let alone decide one day that they are transgender. Wade and his wife, Gabrielle Union, should have immediately thought to themselves, “We should try to correct his thinking.”
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Second, instead of Wade actually doing his job to persuade and correct his son, he let him go down this long and dark road of building his life on a lie.
Third, he makes the decision to go on stage at an event put on by the most iconic magazine in the world and not only support his son’s decision, but ridicule those who stand for truth. He also had the audacity to say that he might even run for office someday in the future.
What a convoluted mess that just further shows how desperately our country needs strong fathers.