There’s a lot we don’t learn about why Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teenager in Owasso, Okla., died a day after a fight in a high school bathroom. However there are some issues we do know, and all of them add as much as tragedy.
We all know that 16-year-old Nex, who usually glided by they/them pronouns with friends, was bullied in school. In keeping with Sue Benedict, their organic grandmother and guardian, the bullying started in earnest last year. We all know that Nex didn’t report the current encounters to lecturers or college officers. “I didn’t actually see the purpose in it,” they informed a police officer in a body-cam video launched by the Owasso Police Division. “I informed my mother, although.”
We don’t know definitively why these college students have been bullying Nex, however we all know that they focused at the very least one different gender-nonconforming pupil, and we all know that Nex didn’t personally know their tormentors. When the police officer requested why the scholars have been harassing them, Nex mentioned, “Due to the way in which that we gown.” They added that the ladies didn’t like the way in which they and their pals laughed.
We all know that Nex responded to the harassment by pouring water on the scholars, however we additionally know the lavatory battle didn’t seem like an even match. “I obtained jumped in school. 3 on 1, needed to go to the ER,” Nex texted a member of the family after the battle. The household’s lawyer stated that the teenager was “attacked and assaulted in a rest room by a gaggle of different college students.” Nex collapsed at dwelling the following day.
We additionally know there’s a brand new legislation requiring college students in Oklahoma to make use of the lavatory that corresponds to the gender they have been assigned at start, and we all know that the legislation has spawned a type of vigilante justice. “That coverage and the messaging round it has led to much more policing of bogs by college students,” Nicole McAfee, the manager director of Freedom Oklahoma, told The Times. “There’s a sense of, ‘Do you belong in right here?’”
The investigation of Nex Benedict’s loss of life is ongoing. Final week, the Owasso Police Division mentioned that preliminary info from the medical expert, which was primarily based on an autopsy, indicated that Nex “didn’t die because of trauma.” The assertion didn’t present a explanation for loss of life.
Calls to the advocacy group Rainbow Youth Project USA spiked after information of Nex’s loss of life hit the media. Eighty-five p.c of these callers mentioned they, too, have been victims of bullying. Even the Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, appeared to acknowledge that bullying and Nex’s loss of life might have been linked: “The loss of life of any baby in an Oklahoma college is a tragedy,” he said in a statement, “and bullies have to be held accountable.” No phrase on whether or not he, a Republican, acknowledges his own party’s public attitude towards the L.G.B.T.Q. group as bullying. We don’t know but why Nex Benedict died or whether or not they have been bullied within the rest room that day due to their gender identification, however we completely know that right-wing political leaders in Oklahoma have repeatedly demeaned and vilified queer folks.
Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of Oklahoma colleges, is thought for his hostility to transgender rights. He threatened a state takeover of the Tulsa college system, partially for its “woke ideology.” He believes “radical gender theory” has put Oklahoma women at risk. He created an emergency rule that prevents transgender students from altering their gender designation on college information. The checklist goes on and on. “It is a conflict for the souls of our youngsters,” Mr. Walters said shortly after his election. Within the wake of Nex Benedict’s loss of life, his position has not changed.
Mr. Walters’s model of anti-trans language is frequent amongst far-right conservatives. Tucker Carlson has known as gender transition “satanic.” Donald Trump’s stump speech features a promise to chop federal funding to varsities that permit “transgender insanity.” Simply final Friday an Oklahoma state senator referred to L.G.B.T.Q. folks as “filth.”
This sort of discourse has made life extraordinarily harmful for trans and gender-expansive People throughout the nation. Deep in our bones we all know it. When political leaders and influential media figures publicly dehumanize and demonize folks in a marginalized group, they encourage others to act on their own prejudices. One trans highschool pupil in Oklahoma told The Washington Post that he carries a bulletproof backpack. “I’m fairly actually scared to go to highschool on daily basis,” he mentioned.
We are able to debate until the cows come dwelling whether or not hate speech needs to be protected by the First Modification. However there will be no debate that hateful discuss, particularly from folks in energy, can on the very least tacitly allow hateful acts. Between 2018 and 2022, a interval that coincides with rising political polarization and excessive speech, the variety of hate crimes reported in colleges nearly doubled.
Of all of the wrenching particulars which have emerged in information protection of Nex Benedict’s loss of life, the one which broke my coronary heart in two was a remark by the lady who raised them. “Nex didn’t see themselves as male or feminine,” Sue Benedict told Bevan Hurley of The Unbiased. “Nex noticed themselves proper down the center. I used to be nonetheless studying about it, Nex was instructing me that.”
This grandmother in Oklahoma wasn’t condemning a baby she didn’t perceive. She was listening. She was studying. She was attempting to know. Don’t all of us owe it to our youngsters to hear? Don’t we owe it to all of the younger folks in our care — in our households and in our communities — to attempt to perceive the world as they’re experiencing it?
However Republican leaders are working overtime to roll again hard-won L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and the one approach they’ll do that’s by interrupting any impulse towards empathy and compassion of their constituents. By interrupting any impulse merely to reside and let reside.
They don’t need to know, they usually don’t need different folks attempting to know, both. They don’t need college students studying books that acknowledge the total humanity of their queer pals. They don’t need them studying books that reply questions on what it means to be homosexual or bisexual or trans or nonbinary or just questioning. They don’t need folks to know the hazard they’ve put L.G.B.T.Q. folks in. Republican politicians don’t wish to perceive any of this. They’ve determined it’s evil.
I as soon as witnessed a lady shut down a spherical of judgmental gossip a few political determine who’d been caught in an extramarital affair. “That’s not our job,” she mentioned mildly when somebody requested her opinion of the scandal. Pressed to clarify, she quoted the Gospel of Matthew: “Decide not, that ye be not judged.”
She was saying that it’s God’s job to guage proper from flawed. It wasn’t her job. So long as they weren’t hurting anyone else, folks might go about dwelling their very own lives as they noticed match. If God had a difficulty with it, they’d discover out in due time.
It’s onerous to not marvel what sort of tradition we’d have proper now if each politician who claims to be selling “Christian values” took Christ’s phrases within the Gospel of Matthew as precise gospel. If each grandmother in each pink state would take the time to hearken to youngsters who’re attempting to clarify — or simply to know — their very own identification.
Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion author, is the creator of the books “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” “Graceland, at Last” and “Late Migrations.”
The Instances is dedicated to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to listen to what you concentrate on this or any of our articles. Listed below are some tips. And right here’s our e mail: letters@nytimes.com.
Observe the New York Instances Opinion part on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads.
