After the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old Oklahoma high school student who died the day after an attack in the bathroom of Owasso High School, the incident is drawing scrutiny around the rhetoric and push for anti-transgender laws in the state and across the country. Experts say that Benedict’s death underscores that laws like Oklahoma’s S.B. 615, which forces trans students to use bathrooms that aren’t in line with their gender identity, can have violent consequences.
“The loss of Nex Benedict is a profound loss for Oklahoma, the 2SLGBTQ+ community, and the wider world,” Devraat Awasthi, a legal fellow at the ACLU of Oklahoma said to Teen Vogue. “[Benedict's] death is a stark reminder that laws like S.B. 615 have a real-world effect on transgender and nonbinary youth that should not be ignored.”
Awasthi explained that S.B. 615 is “an extreme threat to the privacy and safety of transgender youth.” In forcing transgender students to use bathrooms that don’t align with their gender identity, Awasthi said the law exposes students to violence and bullying, therefore explicitly treating transgender and nonbinary students differently from cisgender students in public schools. “S.B. 615 is a law that elevates the privacy and safety interests of cisgender students above those of transgender and nonbinary students, in violation of the Constitution’s promise of equality under the law,” he said.
A poll from The Trevor Project found that anti-trans laws negatively impact young trans and nonbinary people’s mental health, and contribute to bullying and harassment. In Nex’s school district, Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said these laws have contributed to harassment from sources outside school grounds, too.
“Nex belongs to the Oklahoma school district that has been a frequent target of right-wing extremists. In the past year, a beloved teacher at their school was forced to resign due to ongoing harassment. This extreme anti-trans rhetoric, harassment, and bullying have deeply tragic consequences,” Heng-Lehtinen told Teen Vogue.
Heng-Lehtinen described an “alarming increase in the volume of anti-transgender bills proposed in state legislatures across the country,” he said. “In 2023, we fought over 500 proposed bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community, over 450 of which specifically targeted transgender people. And of those 450 bills, about 147 directly attacked our right to access medically necessary and evidence-based transition-related healthcare.” Currently, the National Center for Transgender Equality is tracking roughly 400 anti-trans bills in state legislatures.
In states like Florida, which has become an incubator for anti-trans rhetoric and legislation, advocates are fighting against an onslaught of anti-LGBTQ bills, for a second year.
“Ultimately, a whole slate of bills passed into law were signed by Governor DeSantis last year,” Carlos Guillermo Smith, senior policy advisor for Equality Florida said to Teen Vogue. “That was the bans on gender affirming care, expanding the ‘Don’t Say LGBTQ Law’ all the way to 12th grade, [they passed the] anti-trans bathroom bill, they passed an anti-drag law that's currently under a temporary injunction by a federal court, they banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs in our state colleges and universities with the intent of academic censorship but also to eliminate programs that support LGBTQ students,” he said, listing some of the record-breaking six anti-LGBTQ bills signed into law in 2023.
“After that record year last year for terrible bills, another 22 New anti-LGBTQ bills were filed for the 2024 legislative session, the same number as the previous year, but different and new attacks,” Guillermo Smith said. The work of Equality Florida is part of a growing resistance to this slate of laws. “Unfortunately, Florida under Ron DeSantis has become synonymous with anti-LGBTQ attacks. And when we are able to stop some of this legislation, we're preventing it from spreading out to other states as well.”
But the impact on LGBTQ youth is real, Guillermo Smith said, because this kind of legislation sends the message that there’s something wrong with being gay or trans.
“There's nothing wrong with being gay, or trans. We see LGBTQ youth for who they are, and they need to be accepted and supported,” Guillermo Smith said. “There are so many people out there standing up for them and fighting back against these attacks. Unfortunately, these laws send a really hateful message that does the opposite.”
