Like many of us, I have been saddened and angered by the death of 16-year-old nonbinary transgender student Nex Benedict after an assault at school. Nex’s death is a tragedy—and Nex is not the only trans young person to have died too soon.
As Erin Reed reminds us at Erin in the Morning, other trans teens have also lost their lives to violence or suicide in the past two years. They include Eden Knight, Brianna Ghey, and Ariyanna Mitchell. They might have included another unnamed teen in the U.K. last week, as PinkNews reports, but for the fact that she thankfully managed to survive 14 stab wounds. Add in the murder of Brandon Teena, a young trans man, in 1993, and many others before and since—not to mention the non-trans LGBTQ young people who have been murdered, like Matthew Shepard, and the horror only increases.
As the mother of a young person just out of his teens, these deaths hit me in the gut. The circumstances of their deaths may have varied, but the fact is, they occurred in a climate of widespread anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ hate that is only getting worse, as Reed has charted. We must do more to support and protect our children and young adults.
I don’t have any magic answers, but I know the solution includes letting the young people in our own lives know we support them no matter their gender, be it fixed, changing, or changed, and no matter the gender(s) of whom they love. It means speaking out when we hear anti-trans or anti-LGBTQ comments; working to make our schools more inclusive of trans, LGBTQ, and other marginalized students; standing up at school board meetings in support of trans- and LGBTQ-inclusive policies, books, and curricula; voting against anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation and legislators; and making our support known to others whose opinions we might sway.
Let us hold in our hearts Nex and the others we have lost, and let us recommit to changing the world for the future of the young people still with us.
Here is the GoFundMe page set up to help with Nex’s funeral costs. Note that the person who set it up used Nex’s deadname, although their grandmother, who had adopted Nex, has commented, “We are sorry for not using their name correctly and as parents we were still learning the correct forms…. the headstone will have correct name of their choice.” As always, do your own research before making online donations for any cause.