Dwyane Wade on Zaya Wade’s Confidence
“Zaya Wade keeps teaching us new things every day,” said the former NBA shooting guard during a one-on-one with E! News at the second annual event for Translatable, the organization he started to support LGBTQIA+ young people after his daughter shared she was transgender. Her bravery comes up often in our talks now, because real courage only shows itself when it’s truly needed.
While the athlete felt he was fairly tough, collecting three championships throughout his 16 seasons in the league, “Zaya Wade has just shown us an incredible understanding of courage and what it looks like to feel safe and feel protected,” he told E!, noting all the assists she’s provided him and wife Gabrielle Union. “All the things that we all want and all strive for, that we all are working hard to find, to see her understand that she has it and to really blossom and bloom in it—it gives you hope.”
Zaya Wade on Being Seen While More Trans People Speak Up
Out there, Zaya Wade talks about lifting up others who are trans—her voice becomes a kind of shelter. Even when harsh words pop up on screens, she keeps going because what helps someone else matters more. Through her reach, quiet moments turn into shared strength. The noise fades when real change shows its face.
Sharing her story out loud gives power to transgender people, she said once before. It helps others be themselves, without worrying what someone might think.
Out front, Zaya Wade joins others stepping into the spotlight to push for inclusion. Not far behind, Kai Schreiber turns heads—not just on runways but also by showing up unapologetically in spaces like Paris Fashion Week.
“Fighting spirit runs in the family,” says Liev Schreiber about his daughter, who stands tall without apology. A different kind of strength lives there, calm but firm. Being seen matters less than being real, and that truth shapes her every move.
The month is still going, and tales such as Zaya Wade’s pop up alongside Kai Schreiber’s, showing more trans people seen across shows, runways, and everyday spaces. While June rolls on, their presence slips into view—less hidden now—in places once closed off.
Kai Schreiber
From the start, Ava Schreiber understood something clear—her path leans toward design, yet identity shaped her just as much. Style waits ahead, though being female marked every step along the way.
“I want to be a supermodel. Period,” Kai told Interview Magazine in June 2025. “I’ve been practicing my walks in the kitchen for years; my mom can show you all the videos I forced her to film.”
She continued, “Struggling with gender identity from a young age most likely had something to do with it.
“Kai never changed—what you see is what has been,” Liev said to Variety in May 2025. Tough doesn’t even cover it; that kind of strength shows up loud. She steps forward, saying, “This is who I am,” not asking, just stating. Her voice matters because she stands tall while speaking.
Laverne Cox
Back in Alabama, during childhood, the actress from Orange Is the New Black got picked on—over and over—”since my behavior didn’t match what people expected from boys,” she said to ABC News in 2014. Hurt by constant rejection, she tried to take her life while in sixth grade
“I was having all these feelings about other boys,” Laverne remembered. “And I didn’t want to live.”
It wasn’t until she moved to New York—and started living full-time as a woman after being introduced to the LGBTQ+ community there—that the actress felt what she described as inner “relief.”
“I feel like it was something I’d been running away from my whole life,” she previously told The Advocate, “something I’d been fighting and trying not to be and trying to negotiate, instead of just trying to be who I am.”
Teddy Geiger
“I can still see that moment when I was staring at myself in the mirror, and I was thinking to myself, ‘If only I were a girl, ‘” Teddy revealed her innermost thoughts in a 2020 interview with Today. “So many times, I was suppressing the emergence of those feelings whenever they appeared, and I wasn’t giving myself the permission to truly understand those feelings and even the thoughts. So, it was like a manifestation of coming out as a lot of anxiety and a lot of compulsions.”
The singer even went as far as to say that the “transition has brought a great transformation” in her life. “It was through this journey of really coming to terms with myself and working through the shame around being trans that I have experienced this great sense of coming home to who I am, ” she disclosed to Apple Music in 2021, “and battling a lot of my OCD and anxiety.”
Tommy Dorfman
“My act is evolution; I’m just a person like any other who is transitioning. I’m illustrating gender fluidity, how quick it can be, how dynamic and vulnerable it can be, and how it’s a continual thing.”
Also for Tommy, transitioning was about discovering that “the types of romantic partnerships I seek are different.”
“I was in a nine-year relationship in which I was presenting as male, with a gay man,” said Tommy, who later divorced Peter Zurkuhlen in 2022. “I’d love him so much, but as a trans woman, I’ve realized I’m not necessarily attracted to the same people a gay man is. ” So we’ve had wonderful conversations to redefine our relationship as friends.”
Elliot Page
The Juno star and writer of the memoir Pageboy revealed his journey of transition, which also included a major event, his recovery from top surgery. In May 2023, he posted a shirtless selfie with the caption, “Dysphoria used to be especially rife in the summer. No layers, just a T-shirt or layers, and oh so sweaty, constantly looking down and readjusting my oversized T. It feels so f’ing good soaking in the sun now, I never thought I could experience this joy I feel in my body. Elliot has also lived up to his commitment by being transparent about his experiences.
Born Nash, the actor told readers in December 2020 that he had secretly struggled with gender dysphoria, and that was when he revealed himself as transgender. “My joy is real, but it is also fragile, ” he wrote in a social media statement at the time.
To all trans people who deal with harassment, self-loathing, abuse, and the threat of violence every day: I see you, I love you, and I will do everything I can to change this world for the better, ” he also said.
Laura Jane Grace
I’m a girl. I want to express this part of me, ” she said in a 2014 cover story for Magnet magazine.
“It was kind of like this thing building you up until the point that you would get so anxious that only if you had a chance to be alone and behind a locked door you would express that part of yourself. And this just kind of kept going as I got older, ” she explained.
Laura said that to “turn those feelings off” and “ignore the reality, ” she got really addicted to drugs and alcohol, and she had a long-time fight with depression. It wasn’t until she was in her ’30s that she understood “these feelings aren’t going away” and came out as transgender in 2012. “I’m very much figuring it out day by day, what it all means, and trying to navigate my life going forward, ” she confessed. “And I’m a f–king wreck in a lot of ways. But at the same time, I’ve accomplished something that was holding me back in so many ways, and I know that’s a very good thing.”
Chaz Bono
Although Chaz was classified as female at birth, he, who happens to be the only child of Cher and Sonny Bono, mentioned that he “always felt like a boy” emotionally.
“With puberty, the pressures on me around how I was to act, what I was supposed to do changed, but also it felt like my body was actually betraying me, ” the musician said to Oprah Winfrey in 2014, years after he started his transition. “I went from being a pretty athletic, straight up-and-down little kid to a very curvaceous woman, and it was just totally horrifying to me. This is a dreadful time because you have this mental picture of yourself, and then your body does exactly the opposite. His journey was featured in the 2011 film Becoming Chaz.
Zaya Wade
So, what made Zaya Wade decide to publicly share her transition? “There are so many benefits to having such an inclusive platform that being online negative all the time is something I can easily ignore, ” Zaya Wade, who is supported by her father and stepmother Gabrielle Union, said in an interview with Dazed in March 2023. “I have been able to receive positivity and then send it out to all the trans people around the world who need a voice and a platform that will allow them to feel inspired living their lives without fear of being themselves.”
Gigi Gorgeous
Calling herself the “Queen of Coming Out, ” Gigi has been sharing her story of discovering her gender identity through videos on YouTube for the past several years. First, she came out as a gay man, then she changed her gender to female and came out as pansexual. “Coming out as trans was the most difficult for me, ” she revealed to NBC News in 2019. “I figured it was going to take quite a while, in fact a really long journey with a lot of steps to take.”
Jazz Jennings
The YouTuber recognized the strength of her voice at the age of 6 when she was a pioneer for the trans community, being the very first one to talk about the gender dysphoria she was experiencing on a 2007 20/20 special with Barbara Walters. Ever since that moment, Jazz has kept sharing her honest feelings about the journey with its most difficult and happiest moments documented on the long-running TLC series I Am Jazz, including revealing her gender-confirmation surgeries.
“Even though it was quite difficult to figure out how candid I should be, mainly because a lot of well-known transgender people don’t reveal their surgeries, ” she admitted in a 2021 Variety interview. “However, for me, it was more about educating as many people as possible about the experience and what it is like to be in it.”
Carmen Carrera
The RuPaul’s Drag Race alum said that her transition started “literally the day after” she appeared on the reality competition season 3. “I was 25, and I figured I wouldn’t be really happy with myself unless I transitioned, ” she remembered telling herself in a 2016 Self video. “Experiencing what a chemical change feels like where my testosterone levels are very low and my estrogen levels are very high, I did gain a kind of emotional awareness that was totally new to me.”
Moreover, she said, “I like the fact that now I can live and function without being so much in my mind [and] judging myself. It will really drive you mad if you are not comfortable in your own skin.”
Hari Nef
In fact, the actress has been so open about her transition that she even live-tweeted her trachelectomy. “I could have hidden in Boston and lived at home for three years, done my transition, taken voice lessons to feminize my voice, had gender reassignment surgery, and spent time completely transitioning before making my debut in fashion or film, but I didn’t want to wait! ”
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez
“There was a kind of upgrading that had to happen, mental upgrading, physical upgrading, all those things, but that was for me in particular, and I really needed time for myself, ” she explained to Playbill at that time. “I couldn’t just put it out there in the public because I wasn’t ready for the public eye to see it, so I needed to give myself time to figure things out.”
Also, since her comeback, the Broadway performer has “reached a level of being comfortable, and with finding that place, I also wanted to demonstrate that there are trans women out there who can do anything they set their minds to.”
Kim Petras
In 2007, when she was just 16, “Unholy” singer Kim’s effort to live her truth even attracted media attention in her native Germany as she requested the medical community’s consent for her to have gender confirmation surgery as a teen. She got the green light for the operation a year later. Talking to The Telegraph, after having the surgery, Kim said, “The fact is that I have always been a woman at heart; I only got the wrong body.”
Caitlyn Jenner
The Olympic athlete admitted to dealing with hidden issues of identity. Years went by without sharing her truth – she kept quiet around loved ones. Yet still, at last, came the line: “Yes, for all intents and purposes I am a woman.”
By then, two months had passed. She appeared as Caitlyn on Vanity Fair’s front page. In a talk with the publication, she shared why she chose to make this change. What drives me isn’t wanting attention, she said.
She also said, “If I were lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life, ‘ ‘You never dealt with yourself, ‘ and I don’t want that to happen.”
