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A post shared by Gabrielle Union-Wade (@gabunion) on Nov 28, 2019 at 3:02pm PST

When Dwyane Wade spoke to Ellen about his child, 12-year old Zaya, revealing she wanted to go by she/her pronouns, he mentioned that he and his wife, Gabrielle Union, had reached out to as many people as they could to educate themselves on the best way to support Zaya. Dwyane told Ellen that Gabrielle had reached out to the cast of Pose for advice. So when Dwyane appeared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, a guest called in to find out what, exactly, the cast of Pose had told him:

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about what it means to be transgender from the cast of Pose?
Oh, great question. The lesson that my wife and I learned is – first of all, we got information. We didn’t have a lot of information and we reached out about pronouns. Something as simple as pronouns, we wanted to make sure we didn’t get it wrong, so we reached out about the pronouns and making sure that we said the right things to our daughter… She’s identifying as a young lady and we wanted to make sure we got all the pronouns right, we wanted to make sure we got the language right so we reached out to make sure that we had all the information that we needed because we are learning in this process as well.

[From YouTube via JustJared]

So, Dwyane doesn’t say that this is the advice he got from the cast of Pose specifically, but, as he said at the start of the video, he’s drunk. How amazing would it be to have the cast like Pose available to answer these kinds of questions for you? Of course, most of us don’t have that level of resource so it’s wonderful that Dwyane and Gabrielle are sharing what they advised with all of us.

While appearing, decidedly more sober, on Good Morning America with Robin Roberts, Dwyane talked about why he’s discussing Zaya’s gender identity so much during his interviews to promote his documentary, D. Wade, Life Unexpected. He said that because their family made the choice to put Zaya’s journey in the documentary, they knew it would blow up in the press. They decided, as a family, to get out in front of the narrative. Information/education has been the main focus of their message. Personally, I’ve found all their communication, including Zaya and her older brother Zaire’s, quite enlightening. They’re answering questions I didn’t even know I had.

This is unrelated but Holly Robinson Peete posted a video taken at the NBA All-Star Game last Sunday of Dwyane and Allen Iverson sharing a moment following the Kobe Bryant tribute that punched me right in the feels.

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A post shared by Gabrielle Union-Wade (@gabunion) on Feb 16, 2020 at 2:34pm PST

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My ? #WadeWorldTour2019

A post shared by Gabrielle Union-Wade (@gabunion) on Dec 23, 2019 at 10:02am PST

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A post shared by dwyanewade (@dwyanewade) on Dec 24, 2019 at 7:09pm PST

Photo credit: YouTube, WENN/Avalon and Instagram