It has yet to be disclosed how Nex Benedict died. What is known is that Nex, who used they/their pronouns, had reportedly been bullied for being nonbinary and was assaulted by three classmates in a school bathroom the day before their death.
Nex, 16, was a sophomore at Owasso High School in Oklahoma, a state where the Republican-led leadership has legislated discrimination against trans youth. Last year when Governor Kevin Stitt signed an executive order that prohibits trans students in public schools and public charter schools from using bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity, he said that his state was “taking a stand against this out-of-control gender ideology that is eroding the very foundation of our society.”
There’s zero evidence that gender identity — or “gender ideology,” as Stitt mockingly calls it — has eroded anything except the safety of trans and nonbinary people who only want to live their lives in peace. When Republicans like Stitt make laws they claim are necessary for “safeguarding the very essence of what it means to be a woman,” (whatever the hell that means) they are willfully fomenting hatred toward a historically marginalized population.
That includes Oklahoma officials appointing anti-trans hate merchant Chaya Raichik to its statewide library advisory board last month. Raichik, known on social media as Libs of TikTok, is a right-wing extremist whose inflammatory posts against the LGBTQ community led to a string of bomb threats targeting facilities, including Boston Children’s Hospital, with false or exaggerated claims about gender-affirming care.
Such comments can have devastating consequences. On Transgender Day of Remembrance in November, Kelly Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s most prominent LGBTQ+ civil rights organizations, said “The epidemic of violence against transgender and gender-nonconforming people is a national tragedy and a national embarrassment. Each of the lives taken is the result of a society that demeans and devalues anyone who dares challenge the gender binary.”
In an interview with The Independent, a British online newspaper, Sue Benedict, Nex’s grandmother, said that bullying against the teen increased after Stitt signed his state’s anti-trans executive order. On Feb. 7, Nex and a friend who is trans got into a fight with three older girls in a girls’ bathroom at their school. At some point, Nex was knocked down and hit their head on the floor, Benedict said. Nex, who she and her husband had raised since the child was 2, died in a hospital the next day.
When Nex would complain about being bullied, Benedict said she told the teenager, “‘You’ve got to be strong and look the other way, because these people don’t know who you are.’ I didn’t know how bad it had gotten.”
Although they were not a member of the Cherokee Nation, Nex lived on a Cherokee reservation. In a statement, Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of Cherokee Nation, said “the facts relating to Nex’s death are not yet fully clear.” But he added, “The more we learn about Nex’s life, the more we come to know a wonderful child whose experience and identity mattered and was worth celebrating. Above all, Nex deserved to live a full life.
For the past few Decembers, I’ve devoted several of my Globe columns to remembering trans and nonbinary people who’ve died from violence. From big cities to small towns, most victims are Black trans women, and guns are usually involved. But I’ve also noticed that, increasingly, there are trans youths among the dead each year. They are killed by strangers, acquaintances, even their own parents.
That same hate is driving some families to leave states where their children can’t receive the gender-affirming care they need.
As of Wednesday, no charges have been filed in Nex’s death, and Hoskins has asked local authorities to assist the Owasso Police Department in its investigation.
Since Nex’s death, a GoFundMe page has raised more than four times its original goal. After media reports and the fundraising page’s organizer used Nex’s former name, Benedict said their headstone will bear “the correct name of their choice.” It is a small solace. Beyond that, all we have is a dead 16-year-old, a grieving family with more questions than answers, and the LGBTQ community nursing a familiar ache of anger and pain over the senseless loss of yet another one of our own.
This is an excerpt from Outtakes, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Renée Graham. Sign up to get this in your inbox a day early.
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @reneeygraham.
