Young Thug is coming under fire for misgendering Dwyane Wade‘s daughter, Zaya.
While many celebrities expressed support and praise for Dwyane and Gabrielle Union‘s daughter, the rapper is one of the few people to come out against Zaya. In a tweet directed at the 12-year-old, he stated, “All I wanna say to dwade son is ‘GOD DONT MAKE MISTAKES’ but hey live your true self.”
Immediately after, Young Thug was hit with a barrage of tweets accusing him of being transphobic. Then, just a few hours later, he appeared to delete the same exact tweet.
Neither Dwyane nor Gabrielle have responded to his controversial tweet.
It’s unclear why Young Thug chose to make such a strong statement against the teen, especially he himself formerly stated he doesn’t believe in gender. “In my world, you can be a gangsta with a dress or you can be a gangsta with baggy pants,” he said for a Calvin Klein advertisement in 2016. “I feel like there’s no such thing as gender.”
Moreover, the rapper’s appeared in dresses, skirts, heels and other clothing items that are typically associated with the female gender, which many people reminded him of in the responses to his inflammatory tweet.
Instagram / Gabrielle Union
Young Thug’s opinion aside, there’s no one more supportive of Zaya coming out as transgender than the Wade family. Dwyane said he feels a strong responsibility to voice and share his love for Zaya, because he knows one day Zaya will be an inspiration for other people in the world. “I looked at her and said, ‘You are our leader. You are our leader and this is our opportunity to allow you to be a voice,'” he continued. “Right now, it’s through us because she’s 12 years old, but eventually it will be through her.”
The basketball player later said in an interview for Good Morning America, “We get a lot of hate from people. But along the way, we, inside, together, as the Wade family, we have to be the ones to have each other’s back. For us, it was important that Zaya understood that her family has her back.”