Orianna R. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Oregon–

Nex Benedict, a 16 year old nonbinary student (they/them), died last month after they were assaulted by three older students in a school bathroom on February 7, 2024 at Owasso High School in Oklahoma. The Medical Examiner has ruled the teen’s death a “suicide,” but the Benedict family insists that the official classification not overshadow the report’s findings “that contradict allegations of the assault on Nex being insignificant.”

On the day of the assault, the attackers flung Nex to the ground, inflicting head trauma on impact. Despite suffering from a head injury as well as multiple cuts and bruises, the school staff failed to report the attack to the police and failed to call an ambulance for proper medical attention to be administered. Nex did not receive proper medical attention until later in the afternoon. In a text message sent to a family member, Nex explained, “If I’m still dizzy and nauseous in the morning I might have a concussion.”

The next day, they were rushed to the hospital after collapsing on the living room floor. They had stopped breathing when medics arrived and were pronounced dead at St. Francis Pediatric Hospital. In police body camera footage, Nex recounts harassment from the three older students prior to the attack, clearly marking this as part of the recent upsurge within the US of anti-transgender violence.

Nex was a teenager who loved listening to rock music, drawing, reading, and playing video games like Ark and Minecraft. They came from a Choctaw family and were not afraid to speak out against injustice when they saw it.

Like many nonbinary people in the United States, Nex was a victim of the effects of numerous cruel and reactionary laws targeting transgender and gender-nonconforming people, which promote objectively harmful and patriarchal ideas about the supposed “gender binary.” In 2022, Oklahoma passed a law banning transgender and gender-nonconforming people from using public restrooms matching their gender identity. Oklahoma school policy does not permit the use of students’ preferred names and pronouns. Brian Walters, the Oklahoma State Superintendent, stated, “There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us.”

Walters, the police, and reactionary media are all unified in sweeping this killing under the rug, denying any connection of the attack with Nex’s death, denying the nature of the attack as a hate crime, and denying their responsibility in perpetuating the violent rhetoric that led to the attack. Walters instead blamed the justified public outrage on the “radical left” for “exploiting a tragedy for political gain.”

Nex should have lived a normal and happy life like all nonbinary and transgender youth deserve, but instead they were placed in a system openly hostile to their very existence and well-being. Nex should have been allowed to grow up and live as the person they chose to be, but that life was ripped away. The perpetrators snuffed out this beautiful young life, and the system that promotes this violence from the top down enabled them to do so.

Not only are the attackers to blame for this, and the negligent staff that failed to send for proper emergency medical attention, but so is the capitalist system itself, which creates the conditions for this anti-transgender violence to arise in a society packed to the brim with all manner of hateful reactionaries.

Last month, Brian Walters named militant, anti-transgender reactionary Chaya Raichik to an Oklahoma library media advisory committee. Walters claimed that she is “on the front lines showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about — lowering standards, porn in schools, and pushing woke indoctrination on our kids” as justification for the appointment.

Raichik, also known by her social media username “Libs of TikTok,” has become notorious for her incitement of violence against transgender youths and progressive educators, including Owasso teacher Tyler Wrynn. In 2022, Tyler Wrynn was targeted, harassed, threatened, and scared into resignation for his acceptance of LGBTQIA+ youth. Nex Benedict admired Wrynn and was “very angry” about the treatment that led to his resignation. Here we see how progressive educators who want nothing more than to protect their students and provide education in a safe environment are targeted and driven out of the field, while our public schools court violent reactionaries.

If we want any kind of real solution to the violence faced by transgender and nonbinary youth, all progressive and revolutionary forces must unite, and struggle to fight the problem at its roots, which lay in the oppressive social relations of capital. Not only must we oppose any and all discriminatory, anti-scientific policies in legislation and in the school systems of the US, but all working, progressive, and freedom-loving people must be willing to fight blow for blow and face the forces of reaction head on.

We must not be afraid to organize in defense of ourselves as a class and of the most vulnerable and oppressed people among us, to do whatever it takes to end the violence and chase out the reactionary anti-people forces that shrug with indifference to the cruelty aimed at oppressed and marginalized peoples. We must not be afraid to build and create a society free from the poisonous emanations of patriarchy that are embedded in capitalist social relations. We struggle onward for a society where the safety and well-being of the working masses, especially those most marginalized, are placed in our own hands and decided by us. 

Justice for Nex Benedict! Say their name!

Categories: Discrimination, LGBTQIA+, U.S. News