Kids Like Nex
the bullying of trans kids results in fear, isolation, and death
I’ve written about bullies before. It’s a prevalent theme when you’re any shape of queer or different. The worst part about writing about bullies is the need to acknowledge how frequently they win.
They win all the time.
On February 8th they took the life of Nex Benedict. Several journalists and authors have already covered the details surrounding Nex’s death which I won’t cover here1. It’s important to read and know, and I encourage you to spread this news widely. Nex and their family deserve justice for this wrong.
But this space? Here I want to consider what happens in this bullying culture to everyone else.
To the children, the teens, the young adult, and even to the adults in a town or school where hatred toward transgender folx and queer people is condoned, we know that we are not safe.
We are not safe riding the bus to school. Boarding the bus is being on stage, walking down a vicious catwalk and facing our attackers first thing in the morning. It sets the tone for our days, and it encourages us to expect violence and intolerance all around us. We are tense. We are afraid that today is the day we will be tripped on the bus steps. The bigger group of kids around us will take our backpacks and lunch bags, they will terrorize us where no adult eyes can see, they will hurl insults and slurs at us, and our job is to sit on the bus beside them and not react.
We are not safe in our classrooms. Teachers cannot see every interaction between students, and someone will take advantage of that moment, that opportunity to snicker and pass rumors around us. If we raise our hands to speak we will be mocked. If we stay quiet they will know their attacks are working, and they will double down on their efforts.
We cannot trust adults. They do not believe us when we tell them our truths. We’re just sensitive, they say. Or we are overreacting. We should turn the other cheek. We should understand that bullies are often hurting, too. Even the best adults will turn a blind eye to “the small harms” that bullies inflict upon us, and the worst adults will add to it.
We cannot trust our classmates. Even friends will turn on us when they are taunted by bullies themselves. I’ve done it. Maybe you have, too.
We cannot use the restroom. For all the fear drummed up in the news and in legislative halls across the United States and abroad, the people most targeted in public restrooms are the ones who are gender diverse. And so we hold it until we get home, our bodies bursting from the pain and indignity.
We cannot change in the locker room. Some of us got smart about wearing gym clothes under our other clothes, a double layer of protection that reduced our chances of bruises, cuts, scrapes, pinches, jabs, taunts, and insults. If we are savvy we will find a way to get out of gym, usually with a doctor’s note, but then we will be called other names for being overweight, unathletic, uncoordinated, slow, or simply not competitive. Sadly, some of us dream of running, of playing the sports our classmates love, of being part of a team.
We cannot play sports. Even if we’re not the clunky kid with coke-bottle-lens glasses, there are often rules prohibiting us from playing on the team we belong on. And for every cisgender kid who believes a transkid will steal the glory from them, more transkids are deprived of the opportunity to play at all. Our victories are invalidated. Our sense of belonging is stripped from us.
The library does not tell our stories. And even if we could muster the courage to search or ask for books with characters like us, many school libraries don’t have those books on their shelves anymore. This teaches us that we are “freaks,” and that our lives are nothing better than “fetishes” and “hypersexualized content” not fit for children to see. And when we cannot find ourselves in books, we cannot find our community. This keeps us isolated, alone, and afraid.
When we are harmed, we are punished again. It is hard enough that we are not believed when we try to tell others that we’ve been bullied, beaten, abused, targeted, threatened. For divulging this information we are often victimized again by being suspended from school, sent to detention, and prevented from participating in events.
Our parents cannot keep us safe. Sometimes we are not safe telling them our truths either. But even if we are fortunate to have supporting families, they cannot go everywhere with us. Some of us, even at a very young age, protect our families from knowing that anything is wrong. We’ve often faced so much rejection that we cannot bear the thought of losing a family member by telling them who we are and what is happening around us. We carry our fears in silence.
We grow up too quickly if we get to grow up at all. Suicide rates among queer and trans youths are astonishingly high. Self-harm is prevalent. We frequently end up in relationships that feature more bullying, coercion, trauma, and abuse. We endure higher risks of addiction. If we need medical care we struggle to receive it. Sometimes the bullying and isolation are so severe that we would rather not live through the next event. Our futures are at risk every single day.
Logically, the next part of this should be about the bullies. I should find some way to speak to them, to understand their pain, to see how they’ve been programmed by hate culture to behave the way they do. And while I do feel those things on some level, I just don’t care about it right now. I can’t access those emotions for all the anger and fear and hurt that I’m feeling. And anyway, those bullies have loads of folks lining up to protect them.
I’m here for Nex.
I’m here for the kid who doesn’t get to celebrate their 17th birthday.
I am here for a person who decided that living out loud as themselves in a state that actively hates them was still the right way to go about life.
What matters now is how we face bullying behavior.
It matters how we cover the story of Nex’s life, of the bullying and intolerance they faced.
It really matters that no investigation into the circumstances surrounding Nex’s death would even have taken place if not for the cries of injustice coming from the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, Senator Sarah McBride, and others. And I hope you may have also come to acknowledge that no Black or brown child in this situation would be getting any kind of media coverage of their death, no matter how cruel and traumatic it might be.
I want to tell you about Nex. I want to share with you what their dreams were about, what they hoped for their future. I’d love to share what made them feel excited or inspired. I wish I knew their favorite color, the book or movie they most identified with, and if they liked ice cream or pie or cake. If I could, I would share with you all of Nex’s plans for their own future, a future that would have made this world so much better and brighter with them in it.
But you and I will never get to know Nex Benedict, and for that we are poorer in so many ways.
So today I am grieving the loss of that beautiful kid who reminds me so much of myself, who could be one of my own kids, who could be one of yours. Please don’t forget that there are others still in this world worth protecting and loving – kids just like Nex.
Your trans friend,
Robin
It was a revelation for me, in my mid-twenties, to suddenly understand that kids didn't bully me because 'kids will be kids' but because they were policing my gender performance— a thing I wrote a reflection on for my blog: https://open.substack.com/pub/kschatch/p/bullies?r=ntqgr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web.
Every single instance of bullying I survived (and I survived, but barely, there was a time when I came dangerously close to not getting to grow up to be a thriving queer adult) was an instance of my peers communicating that I was doing gender 'wrong'.
This is was in the 90s, and over the years I have gotten to see how things have improved, how more people actually talk about the specifics of bullying as a form of harassment aimed at kids who aren't adhering to the status quo, and that's what makes this hurt all the more. We need to do better. We must do better. We must name loudly and often that teenagers and kids who bully their peers are doing it because they are learning bigotry from the adults and the culture around them. That adults demanding to remove books are just those teenagers grown up, with way more power to bully people, and they most often keep bullying kids.
I want us to all make a world where queer kids don't just survive school, but get to be themselves fully and thrive in it.
heart breaking and vital piece of writing. thank you.