While the queer community and most of American in general have expressed an outpouring of support for Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union’s affirmation of their 12-year-old daughter, Zaya Wade’s affirmed gender as a girl, Louisiana rapper Boosie Badazz has a different reaction.
Posting an Instagram video to weigh in on the subject, as he often does, Boosie repeatedly misgenders Zaya and shows a lack of understanding about what affirming a gender identity for a transgender child at twelve entails. “I gotta say something about this sh*t man,” Boosie starts off. “Dwyane Wade, you’ve gone too f*cking far, dog. That is a male, a twelve-year-old. At twelve, they don’t even know what their next meal is going to be! They don’t have sh*t figured out yet. He might meet a woman at sixteen and fall in love with her. But his d*ck be gone?”
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From there, Boosie continues to reveal a lack of basic understanding about what the initial steps of transitioning are, repeating “don’t cut his d*ck off,” and asserting that if Wade’s child was gay, it would be okay, but addressing “him as a woman” is too far.
Obviously, the details of surgeries and whether or not a trans person has opted to have them is personal, private information that doesn’t need to be parsed by random celebrity bystanders. The transitioning process begins on a much smaller scale, with acceptance and adoption from family and friends of a trans person’s affirmed gender identity and pronouns, and steps like hormones and clothing/grooming come long before any decisions about surgery.
Regardless, it seems clear that Zaya is the one who knows and understands exactly what she wants her life to be like — and Wade and the rest of his family are much better educated about the process than Boosie is. “Zaya started doing more research,” Wade told ABC News in a piece about his daughter’s decision. “She was the one that sat down with us as a family and said, ‘Hey I don’t think I’m gay.’ And she went down the list and said this is how I identify myself — I identify myself as a young lady. I think I’m a straight trans, because I like boys.'”
Well, that doesn’t sound like reaction of someone who is unsure or confused about where their next meal is coming from, let alone how they feel about their gender and sexual orientation. Hopefully Boosie can continue to educate himself about the situation before weighing in publicly again.
