"Got into a fight"

If you can't blame the victim 100%, why not 50%?

If there’s one thing that the media is certain about, it’s that Nex Benedict “got into a fight”.

FOX23 News Tulsa: “Got into a fight” (Repeated verbatim in text description.)

Owasso Reporter: “They were reportedly involved in a fight at school”

KJRH-TV: “A parent had called them as said that their 16 year old daughter had gotten in a fight at school.”

KJRH-TV: “The teen was involved in a school fight.”

News On 6/KOTV: “was involved in a fight”

Same source, on screen graphic: “16YO GOT INTO FIGHT WEDNESDAY”

Same source, text description: “was involved in a fight at the school”

Same source, video title: “16-Year-Old Owasso Student Dies At Hospital 1 Day After Fight At High School”

News On 6/KOTV: “Taken to the hospital after a fight”

News On 6/KOTV: “The student who died was involved in a fight at Owasso High School” (Repeated verbatim in video description.)

KFOR Oklahoma’s News 4: “The 16 year old student from Owasso died one day after getting into a fight at school”

CityNewsTulsa: “In a heartrending incident that has shaken the Owasso community to its core, a 16-year-old student has tragically passed away at a local hospital, just one day following a fight at Owasso High School. The unfortunate event has sparked an outpouring of grief…” (Title of the story: “Tragic Outcome After High School Altercation: 16-Year-Old Owasso Student Passes Away”)

yahoo!news: “was involved in a fight”

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The trend is relentless. Some of this is traceable to a police statement that a parent of Nex reported them being “involved in a fight” but there is no source that makes it clear whether that is the parent’s language or the language of police providing information to reporters. I want to make clear, however, that information from law enforcement does not absolve reporters of the responsibility to do their jobs. In fact, knowing what we know about how frequently police officers lie, even under oath, and how deeply their biases can run, no good reporter should even think about presenting an uncorroborated police statement as fact.

Worse, the only eyewitness we have is Nex’s best friend, also assaulted, who didn’t report anything like a “fight”. There is as yet no testimony of which I am aware from the children who beat Nex, so while we must always take a single source with a grain of salt, literally the only witness who is talking is presenting an account that looks nothing like a “fight”. Some media performed better than others, describing the beating as “an altercation” which does not carry the same connotation of mutual combat. Others performed worse by using the language that Nex “got into” a fight, an even stronger imputation of blame than “was involved in a fight”.

Finally, in one of the mainstream media sources I reviewed (over 40 at this point), none of the stories identified the bathroom as a significant point of danger for students that had been in the news, nor did any story note that banning trans people from gender-congruent bathrooms, as Oklahoma’s government did in 2022, was supposed to create more safety for students, not less.

I will, of course, continue to monitor this. Without direct sources among Nex Benedict’s circle of friends, at this moment I am better equipped to critique the media coverage than confirm the details that I know many of us would like to see firmed up.

I am also working to connect this story to the story of the murder of a trans person last summer that is only just reaching the media in the past 5 to 7 days.

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Lastly, let’s take a bit of time to acknowledge that while there are good reasons why this story is particularly newsworthy — the site of the assault in a public school, and in the bathroom of that public school, Nex was under 18 and thus didn’t have a choice about declining school if they felt unsafe, Oklahoma is a state with more than one anti-trans law on the books that specifically target kids, including a bathroom bill that was supposed to prevent violence in schools — many murders of trans people never gain national attention. It is inevitable that some people will have strong feelings about Nex’s story reaching beyond their home town when so many others have not.

As we talk about these, race should and will come up. It matters that most people identified as trans who are murdered are AMAB and people of color. It matters that Nex appears white in pictures and video coverage. We do not need to value Nex’s life less, or mourn their death less, to acknowledge the pain of those whose loved ones’ lives went uncelebrated and murderers went unlamented. If we wish to fight the vulnerability of trans people to violence, then we must fight racism, which adds so much vulnerability to so many trans people.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back with more later, I’m sure.

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ETA: Craig Nixon generously provided a Freedom Oklahoma link. They, like me, are hesitant to say too much, for various reasons, but they did have one piece of information that they felt comfortable to assert as true and which is relevant to our conversations here: “Nex was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.” I said above that Nex appeared white in photos, and they do, but whiteness completes its hegemony by being assumed. I am glad that I did not assume that I knew Nex was white, but let’s also not assume that Nex didn’t have a claim to whiteness that was important to them. In complex families, denying whiteness can in effect deny connection to those we love. Let’s continue to be un/comfortable with not knowing Nex’s story. Let’s be eager to learn instead of eager to pronounce. And let’s share our empathy with their family and with the Cherokee Nation.