Nex Benedict was a 16-year-old non-binary student who tragically died after they were physically assaulted in their school bathroom on Feb. 7, and the media still doesn’t care enough to get their pronouns correct as they went by the pronouns they/them.
Nex’s grandmother, Sue Benedict, picked Nex up from school and took them to the hospital for their head injuries sustained due to a fight in school. After talking to the police, Nex was discharged but collapsed the next day and taken to the emergency room where they were pronounced dead. The cause of death has not been determined.
Nex attended Owasso High School in Oklahoma, which is one of ten states that requires students to use the restroom for the gender they were assigned at birth. The Oklahoma superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, has continued to stand strong in his belief that transgender and nonbinary individuals do not exist and that students cannot go by names or pronouns that are not in accordance with the students birth certificate.
Nex’s family says they were bullied because of their gender identity. The Owasso police said they “don’t know that being non-binary is what triggered the attack”. Many LGBTQ+ organizations have gone to their social media to dispute this and call it what it was, a hate crime. Because it was.
This statement by the police has only been fuel for the anti-LGBTQ+ fire. Many news publications have presented this information as fact, rather than a statement given by the police. Many news publications have reported that the incident took place in the women’s restroom and used she and her pronouns for Nex.
This definitely isn’t the first time a queer person has been murdered and this definitely isn’t the first time news publications have used a queer person’s death to further discriminate against them.
The Onion, a satirical news publication, released an article about this last year after news articles continuously misgendered and completely disrespected Brianna Ghey, a transgender teenager that was murdered in a premeditated attack last year.
The end of the article focuses on how transgender people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be the victim of a violent crime. The last sentence of the article is “we salute our colleagues across the media who are working tirelessly to make that number even higher” which perfectly describes what journalists role has been in reporting on queer issues recently.
Since 2020, there have consistently been more and more anti-transgender bills introduced every year. A national survey by GLSEN found that 75% of transgender and non-binary students felt unsafe at school and 59% had been denied access to restrooms that match their gender identity.
Since Nex’s death, calls to national crisis hotline for LGBTQ+ youth from Oklahoma have increased from an average of 87 calls per day to 474 and 85% of those callers reported being victims of bullying too.
These queer children aren’t getting the respect and validation they deserve in life and, because of bad reporting, they aren’t getting it in death either.
There are countless guides by LGBTQ+ organizations and trusted news publications for how to talk about queer people and these issues in the news. The resources are out there and they need to be used.
Nex’s grandmother said they were teaching her about their identity and they were always understanding if she used the wrong pronouns or name. She didn’t always get it right, but she was trying to do better which we all need to do. We as people need to do better and we as journalists need to do better.