Eleven weeks ago, on February 7, non-binary student Nex Benedict was assaulted in a bathroom in Owasso High School West Campus in Owasso, Oklahoma. The next day, they died. They were 16 years old. In the hours immediately after, people who knew Nex or just knew Owasso began to speak out. Trans and non-binary students were scared and angry, the Benedict family appeared to be in shock, and the one constant seemed to be that media coverage, from local news to Benedict’s own obituary, used feminine pronouns and Benedict’s deadname rather than respect their own agency. (Friends say Benedict preferred “he/him” pronouns, while their family used “they/them.” When in doubt, we’ll go with gender-neutral. But the one we know Benedict didn’t use was “she.”)
Then something uncommon happened. News of Benedict’s death went viral. Many trans and non-binary people who die tragically or violently receive little sympathetic attention, but starting with a Pittsburgh blogger, the nation began to notice. Pervert Justice (me) had some of the earliest coverage to follow PghLesbianCorrespondents’ initial story, and ever since we’ve been searching for understanding of and meaning in Benedict’s tragic death.
One thing does appear to be clear now: Benedict died of toxicity related to a voluntary overdose of diphenhydramine (an allergy drug often sold under the name Benadryl) combined with a much larger than normal dose of fluoxetine (often sold as Prozac). After what some (everyone) felt was a premature denial that a bathroom assault the day before Benedict’s death had anything to do with Benedict’s death, Owasso police released a summary coroner’s report in mid-March indicating levels of both drugs were high, and then a redacted version of the full report two weeks later.
Despite vocal disbelief due to the rarity of death by Benadryl overdose, forensic pathologist Dr. Judy Melinek, who is unaffiliated with the case, confirmed to Wonkette that serotonin syndrome is well-known and can be fatal. After reading the medical examiner’s report, she was also able to confirm that the blood levels of Benadryl were similar to levels that have caused death in others even when diphenhydramine is taken alone, and that Prozac and other serotonin-affecting medications can make Benadryl toxicity worse. Given the relatively high levels of fluoxetine, the combination was likely very toxic. In short, from the information released we have no reason to believe that Benedict’s death was anything other than suicide.
For those worried that the full story hasn’t come out about Benedict’s cause of death, Melinek also stated that redactions to these reports are common, very often to protect the privacy and feelings of the family, and that the assessment of death by suicide (rather than accidental or forced overdose) was likely informed by a separate investigative report created by police but shared with the medical examiner. Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler disclosed that police had found a “suicide note” written by Benedict. Despite public questions, standard practice would be to deliver the note to the person addressed, likely a close family member, without releasing any contents. As a result, the public has likely learned all it ever will about the direct cause of Benedict’s death.
Every life is precious and by extension every death is significant. But it takes nothing away from the many infinitely valuable human lives to state that in a public sense, in social, historical, and political senses, some deaths are more important than others. There is no question that Benedict’s tragedy has captured attention that escapes other deaths, even the suicide deaths of other trans and non-binary teenagers. Part of this, certainly, was the suspicion that Nex’s death coming on the heels of an assault might indicate they’d been emurdedr. And with the assault happening in a bathroom, at a school, the implied narrative seemed particularly compelling:
[I]t is possible for the public easily to see how [politicians’ anti-trans] rhetoric is connected to the murder of a non-binary child in a public school restroom. […] The emotional power of Benedict’s story of a straight A student targeted, bullied, beaten, and ultimately dying has a huge capacity for resonance with people who may not be sympathetic to all trans people or all trans issues, but see the danger of state laws and policies singling out trans and non-binary children….
For many, the emotional power and meaning are reduced by Benedict’s suicide, but this should not be so. Yr Wonkette thinks it should be the opposite: Murder is already illegal. While there is much we can do to reduce violence, little of that is specific to trans or non-binary people. Little is specific to schools or children. And even when all the anti-violence policies we would support have been put in place, there’s no guarantee that no one anywhere will murder another human being ever again.
This makes it difficult to connect policies preventing violence generally or murder specifically to any one tragedy. It makes it impossible to say, “But if we had this policy, Nex would be alive today.”
On the other hand, the suicide of a child is always the failure of a community, and in Oklahoma this is only easier to see. Before Benedict died, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters had gone on record many times refusing to increase resources for schools (and calling teachers’ unions “terrorists” for asking) and bashing queer and trans people. After Benedict’s death, Oklahoma state Sen. Tom Woods called “filth” any statement which acknowledges trans and non-binary existence, saying such things don’t belong in schools. Two weeks later he went on record calling the “narrative” that Benedict was bullied and assaulted the product of a “woke mob” which he would oppose — today, tomorrah, and foreveh, probably.
The Oklahoman noted those remarks and in an editorial by Clytie Bunyan suggested that “Walters and all those in authority” were threatening “to saddle Oklahoma with a generation of bullies and bigots.”
Bunyan isn’t wrong. Prominent Oklahomans have chosen again and again and again and again and again to spread the lies that trans children are morally inferior, lying about who they are, or less valuable, or constitute a threat to fellow students.
These actions have consequences. GLSEN’s 2021 National School Climate Survey included state-by-state “snapshots” for 42 states and Puerto Rico. In this most recent set of results, Oklahoma did not fare well, and there’s no reason to think that prominent adults shaming and targeting trans people over the past three years have made things better.
We also know that multiple former students of Benedict’s own high school have spoken up, most recently in an HRC ad getting attention this week. The verdict of those students is consistent with Marley H in that ad: “[N]ot only do your teachers personally not support you, if a student bullies you or harasses you or calls you names, they aren’t going to do anything about it. It promotes a culture where you feel like you shouldn’t report issues.”
And while the schools, Walters, and Gov. Kevin Stitt all claim to oppose bullying, we know that some efforts that purport to be anti-bullying in fact cause more. This is particularly true with anti-violence policies and practices that do not distinguish bullies from those being bullied. When Owasso schools immediately suspended Benedict after the bathroom assault on February 7, they were enforcing a zero tolerance policy that treats all parties as equally guilty. But the most successful anti-violence and anti-bullying policies are not retaliatory or punitive, and do not treat bullies and the bullied the same. Rather the best efforts “foster prosocial behavior.”
If students studying in Owasso schools and experts in the dynamics of bullying are to be believed, both the practices and even the fundamental policies of the schools aren’t solving the problem: They are the problem.
We also know that politics and politicians matter. When Trump was elected president, pro-Trump areas of New York state saw an increase in racist bullying.
Bunyan is correct: Oklahoma authorities are defending themselves through use of the public’s own tendency to make the victim fully responsible for their own suicide, hoping that there won’t be any blame left over to target them, but along the way they are causing more bullying, bigotry, and isolation. The hateful climate Benedict experienced was created and perpetuated at the highest levels of the school district, the state education system, and even the state government itself, and it’s not getting better.
Far from being quieted by learning that Benedict’s death came by their own hands, we should be all the more outraged. This was not the fault of a few teens fighting and an unpredictable injury. These are the slow and steady actions of GOP politicians intent on bigoted rhetoric, bigoted policies, and the creation, as Bunyan says, of another generation of bigots just like Walters and Stitt. More than even murderous violence, this is something killing our children that we can and must fight.
