Nex Benedict

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Content warningThis article mentions Violence, hate crimes, death of a nonbinary person, death of a gay man. If you are not comfortable with reading about this kind of topic, we suggest you take a step back.

Nex Benedict (January 11, 2008 - February 8, 2024) was a nonbinary and genderfluid adolescent who died at age 16 the day after a group of students fought with him in their school bathroom.

Friends of Nex reported that the teen, a student at Owasso High School in Owasso, Oklahoma, preferred he/him pronouns but also used they/them. He was was a member of the Choktaw nation, and lived on Cherokee reservation land (where his high school is also located).

Nex's grandmother, Sue, reports that Nex "was a straight-A student who enjoyed drawing, loved to read, played the video games Ark and Minecraft and loved their cat Zeus." Nex was also known by the nicknames "Roach" or "Roachie".

Feb 7 attack and Nex's death

On February 7, 2024, Nex and another transgender student at Owasso High were attacked in a school bathroom by three cisgender girls. Sue Benedict and an anonymous person who claimed to be the other victim's mother reported to media that Nex was "beaten so badly that bruises formed around their eyes", and had their head slammed into the bathroom floor repeatedly. After the fight, school officials determined that an ambulance was not necessary, but Nex and a family member went to receive care at Bailey Medical Center and they were discharged later that day.

According to Nex's mother, Nex was complaining of head pain as they went to bed on the night of February 7. At some point after that, "They collapsed [and] were taken back to Bailey Medical Center, where they were later pronounced dead."

On 21 February 2024, Owasso police stated that Nex "did not die as a result of trauma", but this statement has been questioned by some journalists. Regardless of how accurate that is, Nex's death has brought additional media attention to the problem of bullying and the problem of anti-trans sentiments gaining popularity across America in recent years.

Media response

Representatives from ACLU and Lambda Legal issued a press release on February 20 stating in no uncertain terms that "The assault on Nex is an inevitable result of the hateful rhetoric and discriminatory legislation targeting Oklahoma trans youth." ACLU and Lambda Legal were and still are fighting a transphobic "bathroom bill" that required Nex to be in the girl's bathroom where the attack took place.

Kylan Durant, president of Oklahoma Pride Alliance, said that "This happened in a red state where all of these laws and these leaders are saying terrible things about queer people and kids. Can we not draw a line and acknowledge that stuff like this happens because of that?"

Podcaster Matt Bernstein (he/they) made a post on Instagram drawing parallels between Nex's tragic death and the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old cisgender gay man who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming.