Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – On a Saturday night in Tahlequah, more than 50 people gathered in the cold at Norris Park.
With candles in hand, the group formed a circle, letting one person at a time come to the middle and honor Nex Benedict, the late 16-year-old transgender student. After several people shared their thoughts, a more than six-foot-tall man with a white beard stepped into the center of the circle holding a candle.
Steadying himself with clenched fists, the man leaned forward and shouted into the Oklahoma night: “My child is not filth!”
As the crowd erupted into applause, he continued: “My child is not a mistake! People I love are not mistakes! They deserve love, respect and acceptance!”
The man’s name is Dan, and he is a father of a transgender son. His statement was a response to a recent comment by Oklahoma senator Tom Woods regarding Nex Benedict’s death. Nex died Feb. 8, one day after being attacked in an Owasso High School girl’s bathroom.
When asked about Nex during a Friday legislative forum sponsored by the Tahlequah Area Chamber of Commerce, Woods said: “I represent a constituency that doesn’t want that filth in Oklahoma. We are a religious state, and we will fight to keep that filth out of Oklahoma.”
Dan spoke about his journey to accepting his transgender son. He said he had a difficult time understanding his son’s female-to-male transition at first, but he saw fathers on the news who lost their queer children to violence before accepting their identities. He asked himself, “If I would accept my child’s identity after he died, why wouldn’t I do it while he is alive?”
This past weekend, Feb. 24-25, vigils were held across the country to honor Nex. Advocates and allies of 2SLGBT+ people gathered in parks and city streets in Boston, Minneapolis, New York and Southern California, as well as in Oklahoma cities such as Tulsa, Tahlequah, Oklahoma City and Owasso.
At an Owasso vigil for Nex, his friend stated that while Nex did used they/them pronouns to make it “easier” for people, he was transgender and preferred “he/him” pronouns.
A nonbinary, transgender boy is someone who was born female, but is transitioning to male. While they identify as a boy, they also present their gender in a way that does not always conform to the gender binary: male and female.
ICT will use he/they pronouns to refer to Nex interchangeably, as these were his preference.
The 2SLGBT+ community claims the loss of Nex Benedict was a result of anti-LGBT legislation in Oklahoma, as well as transphobic rhetoric amongst polititians and the media.
The tragedy has sparked a call for change.
Sunday night on the Guthrie Green lawn in Tulsa, nearly 200 people gathered before a stage lit up with pink and blue lights, reminiscent of the transgender pride flag. The crowd, while dark and candle-lit, displayed various colorful flags and signs reading, “Rest in Power Nex.”
A man in a wheelchair sat with his candle and a sign that read, “This trans veteran supports Nex Benedict.”
“We have to be consistent and committed to removing the power from people with jaded consciences, and those who don’t understand what real filth is because they are not looking in the mirror,” said Sheri Dickerson, executive director of Black Lives Matter Tulsa.
Said Oklahoma State Representative Melissa Provenzano: “I call for an end to rhetoric by government officials that is ugly, hateful, ignorant hate speech uttered by a person in power. Hate speech motivates the worst in our humanity.”
Nex was a chosen name, and it happens to be a Latin word that translates to “death,” “murder,” “slaughter” or “violent end.” Benedict means “blessed.” Some in the 2SLGBT+ community find meaning in the name “blessed murder,” as his death has sparked outrage and a push for change across the country.
“Nex Benedict’s life matters, not mattered. Nex should not be a hashtag, nor should they have to be considered a martyr for the cause,” said Dickerson. “But their courage in simply being who they are, which is something we should all have the right to do, and it is not just a privilege to simply be yourself. We should all be able to do that without fear of harm. I’m black. I’m queer. I’m nonbinary. I’m an ally to the 2SLGBTQIA community.”
A Feb. 21 police report, released in the wake of threats made to Owasso High School, said preliminary results from an autopsy do not support blunt trauma as the cause of Nex’s death but that results from a toxicology exam and an official autopsy will be released later.
Some in the queer community think Nex’s death, whether it was caused by physical trauma or not, was the result of some form of trauma.
“I believe Nex did die of trauma,” Marx Cassity told ICT. Cassity is an Osage, Two-Spirit, licensed marriage and family therapist. “The trauma of being queer and trans in a homophobic, transphobic society, no matter the medical cause. Either way, our community is for sure being further traumatized in the midst of this event as the superintendent of Oklahoma schools last week declared he sees this as a ‘civil war.’ … That’s the context within which we are living and dying in Oklahoma.”
While Nex supporters eagerly await more details on the cause of their death, right-winged media influencers are complaining about the backlash against them for their transphobic memes and content.
“I woke up one day, and all of a sudden, there’s headlines saying that I caused a murder,” said Chaya Raichick, founder of Libs of Tiktok in a PragerU interview.
“It’s really a tragic story. There’s a 16-year-old girl named Nex, and she got into a fight in school. The next day, she died,” Raichick continued. “This girl identified as nonbinary. So this headline says ‘Owasso student dies after beating, critics blame “Negativity” from Libs of Tiktok’… I mean the mental gymnastics that they went through.”
Teenagers in Oklahoma are a large part of Raichick’s audience. According to the Washington Post: “The place where she (Raichick) arguably is having the biggest impact these days is Oklahoma, a state she’s visited only once.”
In recently released police cam footage, a police officer is shown interviewing Nex in the hospital after the Feb. 7 bathroom attack. Nex told the officer he was attacked after pouring water on one of the girls who was insulting him and his friend because of the way they were dressed. They said the three girls picked them up and threw them to the ground, beating them and banging their head on the floor.
His mother, Sue Benedict, said he was bullied for being nonbinary for more than a year, after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed legislation requiring transgender students to use bathrooms based on the gender assigned to them at birth.
At the Tulsa vigil, a transgender high school senior named Hallie spoke about the impact of Oklahoma politicians’ speech and legislation aimed at transgender youth.
“I have felt the direct effects of harmful rhetoric and legislation that our state passes time and time again, such as Senate Bill 615 that stops students from using bathrooms that they feel safest within,” Hallie stated.
“When I first entered high school … I was told directly by the administrators of my school that I was to use the staff bathrooms and these teacher bathrooms. And then flash forward to two years later, because of the policies of this state, now, on every single one of the staff bathrooms, it says that students are not allowed to go into those bathrooms to use them, taking away an option for students that feel safe.”
Hallie is transgender male-to-female and a member of Youth Services Tulsa and serves on the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network National Student Council.
“Many students feel unsafe within their schools to even go to the bathroom, an essential function … and they feel unsafe to do that? That is ridiculous.”
She said she gets messages from peers saying they don’t feel safe to use the bathroom because “this violence is everywhere.”
“Many other trans and Indigenous students are being attacked within the restrooms, or they are being harassed, whether that be verbally or physically, and they feel incredibly terrified because of that. And I just imagine how things would have been different for Nex if they had a bathroom where they were safe,” she said.
Laura Bellis, a Tulsa City Council member and former high school teacher, said she has lost students to violence and suicide because of transphobia in public schools. She encouraged older members in the audience to be a safe adult in the lives of queer youth, recalling students who would avoid the lunchroom to sit with her in her classroom because they did not feel safe.
Other young students spoke at the Tulsa vigil about how they are the same age as Nex, with the same identity, and many of the same interests: minecraft, reading, writing, music, cooking.
Sixteen-year-old nonbinary sophomore Sydney begged the crowd to stop seeing nonbinary kids as characters on the news, because they are human and there are many of them.
“There is a widespread lack of support for trans and nonbinary youth living in Oklahoma. And that’s one of the reasons Nex is no longer with us,” said Sydney.
About Sydney’s speech, Dickerson said, “They said we need to really ‘humanize’ Nex. And I wonder, why do we have to try to humanize a human?”
“According to Oklahoma Watch, Oklahoma lawmakers have filed for 40 new anti-LGBT laws as of Feb. 10,” said Jaden at the Tulsa vigil. Jaden is a 15-year-old student who identifies as lesbian and uses she/they pronouns. “This was two days after Nex’s death. … How many more children will die because of the world pushing against them?”
Many speakers at both the Tahlequah and Tulsa vigils commented on Nex’s Choctaw identity.
Hallie emphasized Nez’s death should be considered a Murdered and Missing Indigenous Relatives case.
“This tragedy reminds me of an event that happened within my school district as well. … An indigenous trans peer of mine was bullied to the point where they took their own life,” she said. “It’s just everytime an Indigenous trans student loses their life, it’s like this light has gone out. Hope just feels to dwindle. But we must keep that light inside, and we must carry their legacies on with it.”
Like many other speakers, Hallie called for Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters to be removed from office for his support of anti-2SLGBT+ legislation.
“I have to say, we have to demand Ryan Walters to resign so that he can no longer harm our Indigenous and trans youth. We are the many, and these legislators, they are the few,” she said.
Nicole McAfee, who is nonbinary and uses they/she pronouns and also serves as executive director for Freedom Oklahoma, which advocates on behalf of 2SLGBT+ people: “Oklahoma state superintendent Ryan Walters’ policies could just as easily be summarized as ‘kill the queer, save the children.’”
McAfee’s statement was meant to draw a connection between current anti-2SLGBT+ rhetoric and a phrase used to justify the removal of Native children from their homes during the Boarding School Era: “Kill the Indian, save the man.”
“Just as we saw at the residential boarding schools, current policies attempt to remove trans and queer youth from any sense of community and support,” McAfee said.
They continued, “The last conversation that I had before single-sex bathrooms were voted on in the Senate floor was with the then-senator of Owasso. He told me, ‘I know this is wrong, but it’s what my district wants.’
“I can tell you that it’s not what Nex would have wanted. It’s not what Nex’s family wanted. It’s not what Nex’s chosen family wanted.”
“This way of being isn’t going away,” said Marx Cassity at the Tulsa vigil. “These things we now call gender diversity … these are old ways of being that were here before this place was called Oklahoma. In Osage, we have the word ‘Mi.xo.ge.’ That word translates as a man guided by the moon, a man guided by the feminine. … That points to the fact that our existence is ancient, and it is traditional.”
Cassity is also a renowned singer and songwriter and performed their song “Enemy.”
The lyrics went, “Take a deep, dark breath of my fear. Breathe out compassion to myself. … And the next breath is for all the people who can relate. … Reveal yourself, reveal your true self. Forgiveness brings evolution. … Empathy brings evolution.”
Emmanuel Wayne gave another moving performance during Tulsa’s vigil, singing his original song, “Son of God,” a plea to understand that trans men are no less sons of God than cis men.
Wayne ended the night with lyrics that went, “We might not be a child of yours, or a child that you love, but we know that’s something that we’re worthy of. … We might not be someone you like or someone you want to see, but no matter what you thought, we are children of God.”
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