How Do Conservatives Respond to Trans Death?
On grief, humanity, and bigotry.
(cw: transphobia, death, suicide)
Something that’s always bugged me about the trans women in sports “issue” is that both sides ignore a very simple reality: trans girls join sports teams to have fun. In a rush to dehumanize us, conservatives spread lies and misinformation about everything to the current state of the law (that trans people are already required by the NCAA to be on hormones for 12 months in order to compete) to the issue’s context itself (why would a trans elementary- or middle-schooler who hasn’t hit puberty yet need to be barred from sports teams?) In response, trans advocates tend to take a highly empirical and logic-based strategy towards these claims; we cite the actual state of the law to argue that it needn’t be changed further, we show off academic studies about the measurable difference between men & women’s bodies post-puberty and/or post-puberty, we draw connections between the push to rigorously define the parameters of acceptable womanhood and bigoted movement’s of the past (like I myself did in my podcast episode about the subject, which I still think is very good!), and we point out to onlookers that the true goal of anti-trans sports policies is to push trans people out of public life entirely.
Neither side fully humanizes the actual subject of the so-called debate; the actual trans girls and women who are actually on these sports teams, or who want to be but are being pushed out. One need only talk to a young trans person to realize that their motivations for doing sports are simple: to make friends, to stay in shape, to show off their school spirit, to learn teamwork or leadership skills, or simply for the love of the game. But no, it cannot be that trans people want to play a game with other people, for fun, the most basic impulse that a young human being can experience; we simply must be secret misogynists trying to steal other students’ scholarship opportunities.
Bigotry, like most sins, clouds your judgement and takes you further from your humanity, further from your community, further from God. Bigotry prevents people from seeing a child in need as a child in need, and instead makes you see them as an enemy to be defeated. Worse yet, the trans community’s dehumanization has been so effective that even our own movements have been tainted by this need to be constantly proper, constantly on the defensive, constantly on high alert for microaggressions. While any cisgender schmuck with a podcast can be invited to discuss trans issues, in order for actual trans people to be taken seriously, we need to be experts on government policy, feminist theory, biochemistry, the nature of colonialism, and the complete history of everything from clothing to sports to the English language. Without the privilege of individualism, one crack in our logic in any public capacity is reason enough to delegitimize all of us. Through it all, we don’t allow ourselves relief. We can never truly let our guard down, so we forget to feel, we forget to be human.
I live for the day that trans people get to be flawed, that we get to play a fun game with our friends without our motivations being questioned, that we get to live free of judgement. Unfortunately, as February 2024 has showed, we are still far from that world.
Nex Benedict was a non-binary Chahta (Choctaw) teenager who lived on Cherokee Nation territory in Owasso, Oklahoma. They loved reading, drawing, playing Minecraft, and their cat Zeus. Their family knew about their gender identity and from what we currently know, they were supportive. In an incident earlier this month, Nex was assaulted by three teenagers in their high school’s bathroom. Within a day of this incident, Nex died, possibly due to the trauma inflicted on them by their classmates.
Newly released footage shows Nex discussing the incident in their own words, from a hospital bed hours away from passing. Even Nex themself is unclear as to why they were attacked in this way, but one doesn’t need a powerful imagination to come to the conclusion that their transness was a motivating factor:
I hate all of this. I hate how the last known evidence of this child’s life is police body cam footage. I hate how literal children are so deeply afflicted by transphobia that they can get beat up their classmates on a bathroom floor until they black out. I hate how true justice in my country is so uncommon that, when asked why Nex didn’t report this brutal beating to school officials, Nex stated “I didn’t really see the point”.
Misinformation about the incident is already spreading, including from the Owasso Police Department who said in a statement that their death was not related to the trauma, which is questionable given alternate testimony from Nex’s mother. At time of writing, there’s still a lot we don’t know about what happened. However, it’s hard to not consider the surrounding context of anti-trans rhetoric in Oklahoma and elsewhere. In April 2022, self-identified terrorist Chaya Raichik used her Libs of TikTok Twitter account to target the Owasso school district, wielding a harassment machine that ultimately got a teacher who voiced her support for LGBT students fired. This past month, Raichik—responsible for at least 20 bomb threats on hospitals and schools, including Oklahoma schools—was appointed to Oklahoma’s Department of Education’s Library Media Advisory Committee (despite not being from Oklahoma or being qualified for the job whatsoever), solely to assist with the goal of erasing pro-LGBTQ media for minors. It’s no wonder, then, why people feel so empowered to attack trans people without recourse.
The news about Nex also comes as we’re starting to learn more about the brutal murder of Brianna Ghey in the United Kingdom last year. Brianna was a trans teen who was killed by a pair of minors, a pair who incriminating texts reveal were “obsessed” with Ghey for being trans. One of these two spent weeks insidiously pretending to be Brianna’s friend in order to get close to her before murdering her. The pair were sentenced to life in prison earlier this month. Obviously, this hideous crime isn’t directly related to Nex’s case, but we’re seeing more and more cases of transphobia’s dark consequences every day.
The trans community is no stranger to grief, but this news is even more depressing as we mourn the loss of a trans icon, Cecilia Gentili. Nothing I write here could adequately summarize Cecilia’s importance to our community; an Argentinian trans woman and former sex worker, her tireless efforts to improve the lives of trans people have made an incomprehensible impact, from her daily mentoring of younger queer and trans people to her work in repealing New York’s “Walking While Trans” ban.
Naturally, people came together to mourn Cecilia’s passing. Fitting for a lifelong Catholic, a service was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Queer and trans people came dressed to the nines to celebrate the loss of their friend, mentor, and community leader. Surely conservatives, who regularly remind liberals that it’s inappropriate to celebrate the passing of awful people, would be totally normal about trans death? Even better, could Cecelia’s Catholic identity provide a sense of connection between evangelicals and trans people? Or perhaps, seeing our community in mourning would allow people an opportunity to recognize our collective humanity, that we are all bound by our mortality and that at the very least we should have some respect for the dead?
…Hell, no. These are conservatives we’re talking about.
Supposedly, the Archdiocese of New York was unaware that Cecilia Gentili was trans when they approved of the funeral service. So when the service made headlines, the church’s leaders were aghast at the outpouring of love and joy by queer people for their dead loved one, and even put out a statement about the ordeal just to make absolute sure that everybody knew how much they hated queer and trans people:
Thanks to so many who have let us know they share our outrage over the scandalous behavior at a funeral here at St. Patrick’s Cathedral earlier this week. The Cathedral only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral Mass for a Catholic, and had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way. That such a scandal occurred at “America’s Parish Church” makes it worse; that it took place as Lent was beginning, the annual forty–day struggle with the forces of sin and darkness, is a potent reminder of how much we need the prayer, reparation, repentance, grace, and mercy to which this holy season invites us.
At the Cardinal’s directive, we have offered an appropriate Mass of Reparation.
Even conservatives who were unaffiliated with the church were rabid about the service. To quote the reporting of Assigned Media directly:
The Heritage Foundation’s most vehemently anti-trans propagandist, Mary Margaret Olohan, seemed particularly incensed, tweeting “How did [Cardinal Dolan] allow this to take place?” and referring to Gentili as a “dead prostitute” and a “man who identifies as a transgender woman.” Olohan also referred to Gentili as a transgender prostitute in her piece for the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal website.
To the average cisgender reader, I imagine that this is no more than yet another case of bigots being bigots. But I really need you, yes you, to sit with what has happened here: a Catholic woman who has spent her life trying to help her was being celebrated in a Catholic Church, but instead of ignoring the incident or wishing us blessings, conservative Christians took it as an opportunity to slam us. Outlets misreported that Cecilia was an atheist, because clearly all trans people are godless heathens. The Church even held a Mass of Reparation, literally to apologize to their parishioners for allowing trans people into their doors. Truly, how depraved can conservatives be, that even in death they find ways to disgrace us?
Conservative responses to trans death are rarely dignified, if ever. In response to questions about Nex Benedict’s death and protections for LGBTQ Americans, Oklahoma Senator Tom Woods stated “I represent a constituency that doesn't want that filth in Oklahoma”. One cannot help but read a twinge of joy in these words, as though this Republican was thankful for Nex’s death; one less monster to deal with. At best, trans death is merely a political inconvenience to conservatives; in the infamous email chain that manifested the current onslaught of anti-trans bills, Republican lawmakers referred to the reality that many trans people are so desperate in the face of transphobia that they take their own life, and they did so in the most disgusting and dismissive way possible: “We will need to respond to the suicidal thoughts quote.” As I’ve said before, to conservatives, transgender suicide is the point, they want us to off ourselves, but it’s not currently politically advisable to publicly advocate for trans suicide, so the lived reality of desperate Americans is merely a talking point that needs to be navigated around.
Of course, most often, the conservative response to trans death is nothing at all. Famously, trans people of color die all the time, to no fanfare (from any side of the political aisle). Every new year becomes the deadliest year for trans people so far (although some metrics indicate that 2021 was technically the deadliest, but the numbers aren’t exactly trending downwards). There is something encouraging about the response to the passing of Nex, an indigenous non-binary teen, but it’s hard to think of this situation as being anything close to justice.
As an abolitionist, I should say that the prison sentence of Brianna Ghey’s murderers does not bring me a sense of peace. While murderers should not be the first beneficiaries of the dismantling of the prison industrial complex, and that these murders should probably be removed from society for some time since they are demonstrably a danger to others, I must acknowledge that putting people into prison is not justice in my mind. I also don’t think those who assaulted Nex Benedict being sentenced to prison would equate to justice. Justice would mean that these murders never happened in the first place. Justice would mean that nobody feels encouraged or empowered to carry out violence on another human being, for any reason, but especially for coming out as trans. Justice would mean that trans people wouldn’t have to go throughout their daily lives in fight-or-flight mode, constantly on high alert for their survival.
When we grieve trans life, we are also grieving the continued lack of justice for trans lives. Every trans murder is preventable. Every trans death by suicide is preventable. The system we live under, imagined by conservatives, does not produce justice; cis or trans, we all deserve better.
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Related: an Assigned Media piece about how even trans allies are largely misinformed about trans issues. #ChangeYourAlgorithm and subscribe to their digest emails!
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That’s all for now! See you next week with more sweet, sweet content.
In solidarity,
-Anna
Thank you for covering Nex's story with such kindness and truth. I've been grieving them very hard this week. It's been a difficult time to read coverage of their death, the bullying they endured, and the horrid things conservatives are saying in response to Nex's death.