Republican Politicians Didn’t Kill Nex Benedict, but They Certainly Don’t Seem to Mind When Trans Kids Die.

Nex Benedict was a 16-year-old Oklahoma native who died one day after a beating by their classmates at Owasso High School. Photo courtesy of the Benedict family via The Independent.

“Transgender insanity.”

“Weirdos and freaks.”

“Spiritual warfare.”

“Filth.”

In a world increasingly threatened by climate change, in a country squeezed by a cost of living crisis, the Republican Party unites against the one true enemy: transgender people, particularly children. But why?

“There is a concerted attack that is happening on the right in response to a growing presence of gender nonconforming folk in our world today. I think that there have always been trans folks and there have always been children who feel the way that we ascribe to trans identity, but now because of you know, the boom in media, we are just seeing a lot more of it. And that visibility is something that trans people have fought really hard for, but that visibility also positions them to be vulnerable to people who want trans and gender non-conforming people to not exist,” according to S. Bryce Ross. Ross is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill and uses any pronouns.

According to Ross, fear of uncertainty is at the root of conservatives’ attacks on gender non-conforming people. 

“You know, the very idea that you as a person can be explained by this one variable is something that we try to do to a lot of different variables. We try to, you know, have different characteristics have a lot of explanatory power, and when you can't make those really clear distinctions about people that makes people uncomfortable, and people don't like uncertainty,” Ross said. 

For the most part (though not always, as we’ll explore later), conservative politicians are careful to pin the blame on adults, not children. Trans or gender-affirming adults are smeared as groomers or even pedophiles who seek to “turn” children trans for attention or more nefarious purposes. Advocates against acceptance of and assistance for trans children would argue that they’re not attacking the children themselves; rather, they’re protecting them from adults who wish to manipulate them.

Regardless of the alleged target of their rhetoric, the impact of the resulting legislation nearly always comes down on children. In various states, children are barred from accessing lifesaving – and reversible – hormones and puberty blockers. In Arkansas, parents are encouraged to find and report gender-affirming books in school libraries. In some states, students at public schools are required to use the bathroom of their assigned gender at birth based on claims that allowing trans girls, in particular, access to their preferred restroom puts cisgender girls at risk for sex crimes, which would already be felonies on their own. 

UCLA research has found that there is no link between trans-inclusive policies and bathroom safety. What research has found, however, is that 59% of trans people in one 2016 poll reported avoiding public bathrooms out of fear of confrontation. 12% reported having experienced verbal harassment, and 1% had been physically or sexually assaulted in bathrooms themselves.

Non-binary Oklahoma native Nex Benedict, who used he/they pronouns, was just 16 years old when they died the day after being attacked in a bathroom by three of their classmates. Nex and another transgender student were in the girl’s bathroom, as required by Oklahoma law, when the girls began to taunt them about their clothes. Nex retaliated by throwing water at the girls, who had a history of antagonizing him. In the ensuing attack, Nex reportedly hit their head on the floor while being beaten by 3 other students. Despite this, neither the police nor an ambulance were called to the school, and Nex was suspended for 2 weeks. 

In a video of Nex speaking to the police in the hospital, the police officer appeared to blame Nex for starting “the domino effect” that led to the attack. The water they threw at the other students, he argued, could be seen as assault. 

According to text messages sent to a relative, Nex was feeling “dizzy and nauseous” after the fight, both signs of a potential concussion. The teen appeared to suffer a neurological episode the following day and was taken to the hospital, where they were later pronounced dead.

According to his grandmother, who was Nex’s primary caregiver, Nex had been bullied for his gender identity and clothing since at least the beginning of the school year – and he was not alone. According to a 2021 Trevor Project report, 52% of LGBTQ+ students in middle and high school reported having been bullied in the past year, 2020. 

Oklahoma has become an increasingly hostile place for LGBTQ+ people in recent years, particularly in its schools. On top of existing restrictions on bathrooms, sports, and medical care, more than 50 additional anti-trans bills have been proposed in the state in 2024 alone. One of these bills would prohibit school employees from referring to students with their preferred names and pronouns without written permission from a parent.

The state’s school system is also increasingly stacked with anti-trans advocates who use their platforms to actively target LGBTQ+ students. The state’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, is fiercely anti-LGBTQ+ and ‘anti-woke.’ He has advocated against marriage equality and trans acceptance and pushed for sweeping bans of pro-LGBTQ+ literature in schools. He also used his position as superintendent to appoint social media activist Chaya Raichik to a library advisory committee despite her complete lack of teaching or library credentials. Raichik’s social media, Libs of TikTok, publishes homophobic and transphobic disinformation and has been connected to bomb threats against dozens of Oklahoma public schools, children’s hospitals, and libraries.

“I really see there’s a civil war going on, where the left is really fighting for the soul of our country,” Walters said in one interview in defense of his anti-LGBTQ+ stances. When the highest levels of a school system not only fail to protect trans students, but portray them as the opposing side of a civil war, is it any surprise that Nex “didn’t really see the point” of taking his bullying to school officials?

Even in the wake of this tragedy, the response of Republicans in the state has been incredibly callous. 

“There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,” Ryan Walters said in a New York Times interview about the incident. He then took the opportunity to insist that the state would not allow students to use names or pronouns outside of those assigned at birth.

One state senator from eastern Oklahoma went much further. 

"We are a religious state. We are going to fight to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma, because we’re a Christian state,” Republican Tom Woods said when asked about Nex’s death at a public forum.

It’s difficult to imagine responding to the death of a child with such violent language. One would expect a deflection of blame or at least a gesture at thoughts and prayers. Instead, Woods doubled down with a response to a question about a killed child that essentially boils down to “good.”  

Since Nex Benedict died, LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization The Rainbow Youth Project USA has reported a 238% increase in crisis calls from Oklahoman youths.

A few weeks after this tragedy, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Republicans reaffirmed their hatred for transgender people as a central policy message. According to Human Rights Watch, speakers peppered hateful anti-trans comments throughout speeches on various unrelated topics during the event. Right-wing commentator Michael Knowles took his repeat appearance as an opportunity to double down on his comments the previous year that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”

Most Republican lawmakers have not openly encouraged the killing of transgender people or children. Still, their actions have made it very clear that their lives are not a priority to them. In West Virginia, for example, lawmakers have attempted to remove the suicide risk exemption in the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Currently, the state’s gender affirming care ban for minors includes an exception for patients with parental consent and a diagnosis of severe gender dysphoria from two separate doctors. Both doctors must provide written testimony that the interventions are necessary to “prevent or limit possible or actual self-harm,” according to the Associated Press.

To reiterate: West Virginia’s anti-trans law, which puts a blanket ban on reversible and lifesaving care for trans children, has an exception for people in imminent danger of self harm or suicide. Republican lawmakers attempted to push through a new bill which closes this loophole just one week before a major legislative deadline. While this bill does not seem to have met the deadline, the reality that some Republican legislatures would rather children suffer or die than receive care they disagree with in such a narrow circumstance is not something that should be ignored.

Republicans’ rhetoric and surge of anti-trans bills have had a demonstrable effect on how trans people are treated in America. Hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people have been climbing for 4 consecutive years now, according to the FBI. Through an increasingly hostile legal environment and borderline genocidal rhetoric, Republicans have normalized transphobia among the general population and put trans people and their families at risk for violence or even death – and they don’t seem to mind. 

An Addendum
Since this article was written, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office has concluded that Nex Benedict died by suicide. While his death may not have been the result of the beating he sustained the day prior, a 16-year-old being bullied to the point of suicide is no less significant. According to the Trevor Project, 41% of LGBTQ+ youths seriously considered suicide in the past year, including half of all transgender and nonbinary youths. The Trevor Project’s research has found that LGBTQ+ young people report consistently lower levels of suicidal ideation with access to affirming spaces, which were clearly denied to them by Oklahoma’s school system. Owasso Public Schools is currently under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to determine whether or not the school system failed to adequately address “sex-based harassment” under Title IX.