In February 2024, I had high surgical procedure — a type of gender-affirming care that was lately labeled “mutilation” by the president of the US in one of the many heinous executive orders he issued since his inauguration.
A 12 months in the past, within the post-anesthesia care unit of a New Jersey hospital, a nurse clacked at a keyboard whereas I opened and closed my eyes slowly, not but aware sufficient to recollect somebody had simply operated on my chest. She requested me how I used to be feeling and positioned a small Styrofoam cup of crushed ice on the bedside desk. As I picked up the cup with a weak grasp and crushed frozen water between my tooth, I started to recall why I used to be there. After I tried to place the cup again down, it slipped from my hand and hit the bottom. “I’m so sorry,” I slurred, nonetheless in a twilight of anesthetics and euphoria, my mind so blissed out by the considered lastly having a flat chest that I used to be fully numb to the ache.
That very same week, 16-year-old Nex Benedict wakened on the ground of their faculty rest room after having their head repeatedly slammed into the tile, after having “blacked out” as they described hours later when police have been lastly contacted.
After I learn the information about Nex, a nonbinary teenager in southwest America who reportedly used each he/him they usually/them pronouns, I pictured them on that loo flooring and puzzled in the event that they felt numb. I puzzled in the event that they dissociated from their physique, from the current second, floating their mind to someplace else — someplace happier — regardless of the inevitable swelling. Or possibly he felt every little thing. Possibly he felt a magnified sense of dysphoria — the furthest reverse of euphoria — having been attacked for current as his genuine self.
My mom thought I might die on the working desk. She informed me at the least 100 occasions, “It’s a significant surgical procedure!” and “It’s dangerous!” I knew it was main and I used to be already nicely acquainted with threat because it pertained to the best way I current my physique on the planet. However I didn’t die. After I dropped that cup of ice within the PACU, I got here to in a post-op room the place a brand new nurse referred to as my mother and my spouse and informed them they may come see me. Once they walked in to search out me sitting upright, my mother’s aid was palpable. I smiled and I might see the concern shed from her physique. All the things was lighter.
I chewed the driest graham cracker I’d ever tasted because the nurse confirmed my spouse easy methods to strip blood from the drain tubes hanging out of my sides. My chest was coated by mounds of gauze pads and a black compression vest, so I couldn’t see something — I couldn’t but see myself. However I too was relieved. I too shed a weight.
After Nex was examined by a health care provider and cleared for launch from the hospital, Sue Benedict possible didn’t think about he would die. Nex referred to Sue, their biological grandmother and legal guardian, as “mom.” The assault within the faculty rest room left the excessive schooler with bruises throughout his spherical, baby-shaped face and scratches on his scalp that lay beneath an androgynous haircut. The school didn’t call an ambulance, regardless of the blood on the ground, so Sue took him to a close-by hospital.
Nex went dwelling after being examined, and after police visited and told them the incident can be thought-about a “mutual battle” that Nex “initiated primarily.” Sue told reporters her baby went to mattress and drifted off to music as he often did. Maybe he cried himself to sleep combating off the voices in his head that informed him the world can be a greater place with out him. Maybe his bruises ached as he dreamt about getting revenge on his bullies. We don’t know. We do know he collapsed the following day. Nex’s mother watched as his eyes rolled again in his head and he stopped respiratory. Later that day, in a pediatric emergency room, Nex was declared lifeless.
Courtesy of Jackie Domenus
The primary time I met with my surgeon in hopes of scheduling high surgical procedure, it was over a video name. She requested me questions on myself — typical ones, like, “The place are you from?” and “What do you do for work?” Then she requested me to inform her about myself: how I perceive my gender, how I’d arrived on the determination to have tissue carved out of my chest with a scalpel. I informed her how every day after I obtained dressed, the reflection of my chest within the mirror made me recoil, how my again consistently ached from sporting a binder any time I left the home, how I had reached some extent the place I acknowledged that if I get one physique and one lifetime, I’ve the suitable to really feel snug in it. She listened intently, nodding from the opposite facet of my cellphone display screen.
It generally feels shameful to be a 31-year-old who has solely simply begun to totally perceive themself. However the surgeon understood me as “human,” trusting that I knew what was finest for me — that her sufferers know what’s finest for them — an idea that conservative politicians are hellbent on ignoring, no matter the data demonstrating a less-than-1% remorse charge for folk who endure gender-affirming surgical procedure. They’re particularly insistent on stripping trans folks 19 years or younger of their bodily autonomy, despite the fact that only 0.04% of trans youth receive gender-related surgery, as most gender-affirming look after minors usually entails social transition or puberty blockers with reversible results.
However as an grownup receiving gender-affirming care in New Jersey, a liberal-leaning state, each nurse checked my chart and confirmed my pronouns at every appointment earlier than and after surgical procedure. Nobody made assumptions. Within the pre-op hospital room, the nurse who slid an IV needle into the vein on my hand was possible in her 60s. She laughed with me concerning the ugliness of the hospital robe as she tied it above my bare again. Regardless of the distinction in our generations, I didn’t really feel judged for the process I used to be about to endure. This sense of consolation was afforded to me again and again all through your entire course of, making certain I used to be not ostracized, not “othered.”
Nex Benedict attended Owasso Excessive College in Owasso, Oklahoma. Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of Oklahoma’s public faculties, has made it abundantly clear no faculties within the state will permit college students to make use of pronouns or names that differ from those they have been assigned at start. Walters has argued publicly that nonbinary and transgender folks don’t exist, including to current arguments made by different conservatives who’ve coined and weaponized the made-up term “transgenderism,” labeling it an ideology of “wokeness.”
A instructor at Owasso Excessive College whom Nex admired — whom Nex in all probability felt snug being themself with — was compelled to resign in 2022 after Chaya Raichik, the web character behind Libs of TikTok, the far-right social media account, criticized him publicly. The instructor confronted a slew of harassment, prompting him to go away his place. Walters then appointed Raichik to a state committee chargeable for reviewing the appropriateness of books at school libraries.
It’s clear Nex’s faculty district doesn’t care concerning the consolation of queer and trans youngsters, nor does it care if college students are made to really feel “othered.” Owasso trans students have cited strict bathroom laws and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric because the impetus for fixed bullying, which is able to solely grow to be extra harmful with Trump’s current executive order focusing on educators who help their LGBTQ+ college students. Very like Nex, for eight hours a day, 5 days every week, many queer and trans youth are compelled to study in an surroundings the place these in cost reject them — loudly and overtly — beneath the guise of “defending” them.
After I was in highschool, we didn’t speak about gender critically. We didn’t have the vocabulary for it. I hated sporting attire or skirts, a lot most popular board shorts to bikini bottoms, and infrequently tried to mimic the mannerisms of my man pals. We did speak about sexuality. We referred to as issues “homosexual” once we meant “corny,” and referred to as one another “fag” once we meant “annoying.” The few youngsters everybody knew have been homosexual have been bullied mercilessly.
When somebody began a rumor that I used to be a lesbian, everybody jumped on the bandwagon, whispering about it within the hallways, messaging about it on AIM. I used to be in such deep denial and repression about my sexuality that I knew “lesbian” solely to be an insult, one thing I wanted to defend myself in opposition to. I seethed with rage. I needed nothing greater than to ball my fist up and launch it sq. into the faces of the “in style” women who needed everybody to suppose in a different way of me. However I used to be by no means courageous sufficient to face up for myself. I wouldn’t be snug sufficient to return out till maturity. Within the meantime, I labored to make myself invisible, dressing like all the opposite women, kissing all of the boys, mixing in.
Courtesy of Jackie Domenus
Neither in denial or filled with disgrace, Nex was 16 and proudly capable of establish themself as nonbinary, to say their true identification to the world. They have been a straight-A student who cherished studying, cooking, and caring for his or her cat. They’d pals who undoubtedly cherished and admired them, like their trans buddy who entered the lavatory with them the day of the incident.
A bunch of three women had reportedly been repeatedly bullying Nex and his buddy, “making feedback, calling them names, and throwing issues at them,” as Sue Benedict recalled her baby telling her days earlier than the assault. These three women reportedly started making enjoyable of the best way Nex laughed, so he poured water on the ladies. In response, the ladies pulled Nex’s ft out from beneath him and beat him till he blacked out. The following day, he was lifeless.
Almost a month after the assault, Nex’s death was ruled a suicide. Prior to creating that dedication, the Owasso Police Division launched a statement claiming that “the decedent didn’t die because of trauma” after reviewing the preliminary outcomes of his post-mortem. It’s arduous to belief a corrupt system hellbent on making queer and trans youngsters’ lives a residing hell, however even when that assertion was true, maybe what they need to have mentioned was “the decedent didn’t die because of head trauma.” As a result of for too many queer and trans youngsters in Oklahoma, to attend faculty is trauma. To be consistently laid low with your friends for not becoming right into a predetermined narrative is trauma. To search out your self — to search out happiness — solely to have it stripped away daily, little by little, till residing now not appears a viable choice, certainly is trauma.
The day of Nex’s funeral, I used to be mendacity comfortably on my sofa watching unhealthy actuality tv with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s resting on my mastectomy pillow. My incisions have been therapeutic slowly beneath my compression vest and whereas I wouldn’t see my new chest for one more week till my first post-op appointment, I used to be elated. My spouse stored an organized document of how a lot fluid my drains collected and a cautious schedule of my rotating over-the-counter ache meds. My coworkers despatched me a digital card filled with nicely needs. My pals confirmed up for me in methods I couldn’t have imagined. I felt grateful — proud even — to have decided towards my very own happiness, my very own affirmation. I regarded ahead to regaining power and vary of movement and ultimately reentering the world authentically myself.
However there was one thing that nagged at me as I sat propped up in opposition to fluffy pillows, having fun with ice cream as I recovered, and reposted an infographic to Instagram a couple of baby being crushed half to demise for not conforming to gender norms. There was one thing sinister about celebrating a gender-affirming surgical procedure whereas it was (and nonetheless is) unlawful for highschool youngsters to entry any gender-affirming care in Oklahoma and several other states (and shortly, perhaps, everywhere in this country). There was one thing disturbing about waking up from anesthesia as a brand new individual whereas a household ready to say their closing goodbyes to their cherished one.
Courtesy of Jackie Domenus
For some, Nex Benedict’s demise was simply one other tragedy, simply one other “that’s a disgrace” on an extended checklist of atrocities America has grow to be numb to. I hope it was a wakeup name for others. For me, it was a stark reminder that as free as I’ll really feel, I dwell in a rustic that might reasonably I die, than be myself — a notion that has solely grown extra apparent with a brand new administration that’s perversely intent on eradicating queer and trans people. However I gained’t let this be the top. We owe it to Nex to battle for equality, primary human rights, and the chance to be — to totally dwell every day as — nobody however ourselves.
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Jackie Domenus (they/she) is a queer author from New Jersey. Their first ebook, “No Offense: A Memoir In Essays,” was revealed with ELJ Editions in February 2025. A former Sundress Academy for the Arts resident and Tin Home Workshop graduate, Jackie’s work has appeared in The Regular College, The Offing, Pidgeonholes, Foglifter Journal, and elsewhere. Discover extra from her at byjackied.com.
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