Basketball star Dwyane Wade has opened up about his decision to limit the comments on his daughter’s Instagram.
Over the last few years, Wade and his wife, Gabrielle Union, have made an active effort to foster a loving and affirming environment for their trans daughter Zaya – who came out in 2019 at the age of 12.
However, like most teens around the world, Zaya has started to carve out her own lane in the expansive and, at times, harsh social media world.
In a recent interview with the Today Show, Wade revealed that blocking his daughter’s comments was inspired by his eldest child Zaire.
“Well, we have a 20-year-old, Zaire, who went through it a few years before Zaya, of jumping on social media and all of the negativity that comes with social media and the comments,” he explained. “And so we went through it once and we saw how it affected him.”
However, Wade said that when they sat down with Zaya about her social media presence, the conversation was different due to the ongoing anti-trans hate in the world.
“Zaire’s conversation as about sports. Zaya’s is about what a lot of people don’t even understand or get. And so we sat down with Zaya about being on social media,” he continued.
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“Her, my wife and I, we just talked about, we just want to make sure if she’s going to be on social media, if she’s going to show people some of her life, it’s going to be the people that she wants, that’s in her circle.”
Currently, Zaya’s comment section is only limited to a specific set of followers, which Wade says is important for her mental health and well-being.
“Everybody on the outside, that noise on the outside, that (doesn’t) matter. What matters is the voice that you allow in your circle,” he said.
“And so that’s the people we wanted to follow her journey and follow her life. And so that’s what we did, and we left the hate out of it. There’s enough of that in the world. She gets enough of it.
“We didn’t want it to be on her comments so she can read it. We know what we are in this world. Mental health is a very – this is an important topic in this world. It’s very important for us to protect the health of our kids, both physically and mentally, so we wanted to do that.”
Wade’s recent interview comes a couple of months after he filed a petition to update Zaya’s name and gender.
According to The Blast, the documents were submitted to a Los Angeles Court and requested that her name be legally changed to Zaya Malachi Airamis Wade.
The filing also asked that she be listed as female on her legal documents moving forward to align with her gender identity.
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