Trans student killed in school

[temporal1]

Something that really bothers me is that so many people are more interested in how a particular case impacts their own 'cause' - how they can use a girl's death at her own hand to further advance their pet philosophy. This girl was not "trans", nor was she in a restroom not designated for her actual gender. According to her testimony to the police, the bullying was about "how she laughed" and "how she dressed".

I was bullied when I was in public school, in that very same school system.
But I had Christ in my life, and a good family environment. (Well, except that my oldest brother was also bullying me.)
She had a severely broken family life, and didn't have Christ in her life.

I never considered killing myself. This is one of the reasons why I am not for pulling our children out of public school.
Sure, it wasn't all pleasant, in fact, by Jr High through HS it was on the whole pretty rough.

But there's a Christian woman now who according to what she wrote in my Sr year school annual (as a non-believer) who may have made the choice she did later because of me. And as far as I can remember all I really did was say no to her request to help her cheat on a test, and explain why I couldn't - that it was not because I didn't want to help her, but because of my faith, because it would be wrong. Maybe it was more than that, I don't know. Another girl wrote about something that I do not remember at all. She said that when the Psyc teacher passed around a pornographic picture in class, that I passed it on, face down, to the person behind me - that she saw that I didn't look at it at all. (From what she wrote, it sounded like she had looked at it herself.)

My point is not to brag, but to say that there are other young people out there in the public school whose only possible exposure to Jesus may be through one Christian student who is right there beside them in the classroom.
I'll stop now, because now I'm crying again.

[Ken]

No - are you claiming that depression is caused by environmental factors?

Environmental factors are one of the causes of depression.

Okay. So you believe depression to the point of suicide is caused by… people around someone not agreeing to go along with their delusions about them being a different sex than they actually are?

The very studies you cited upstream found that bullying and social/family ostracization were the two leading causes of suicide attempts by trans children.

[Szdfan]

The story here is likely nothing to do with gender ideology, but rather bullying. The question there is what aspect of bullying justifies action from a school?

My son is bullied and he is a bully. The school has a strong stance against it, but they can’t catch everything especially things happening out of view. Unless someone speaks, it wouldn’t be known. Little things happen in front of teachers and children learn what is acceptable to get away with.

These things are interconnected.

According to family and friends, Nex Benedict was bullied because of their gender identity. Did the school create an environment in which it was acceptable to bully students, including non-binary and transgender students? In other words, had students learned that it was "acceptable" to get away with bullying students who didn't fit into a traditional gender paradigm? Posters on this forum have compared transgendered individuals to pedophiles and accused them of grooming children. I am not accusing anyone of anything -- people can believe what they believe -- but isn't it possible that attitudes like this could filter down to someone's children and how they might treat LGBTQ students at school?

On February 26, students at Owasso High School walked out after Nex's suicide in protest about the pervasive bullying at the school --
https://abcnews.go.com/US/student-walko ... =107546201

At Owasso High School in Oklahoma, where nonbinary student Nex Benedict got in a fight with several other students the day before they died, students walked out Monday in protest of bullying and in support of the school's 2SLGBTQ community.

"Our children are scared to death and go to school every day, and something has to stop," one Owasso parent, Susie Eubank, told Tulsa ABC affiliate KTUL. "My child has had direct threats. Direct derogatory names."

Anti-LGBTQ bullying and violence have been the center of conversation in the aftermath of Nex's death earlier this month, as the Benedict family and the local 2SLGBTQ community continue to mourn with vigils and memorials across the state and country.

The family said Nex Benedict's bullying had begun after Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, citing safety concerns, signed a bill into law in May 2022 that barred transgender and gender-expansive youth from using bathrooms consistent with their gender identity.

Part of the argument and concern I'm hearing is that Oklahoma's policies about non-binary and transgender students helped exasperate bullying of these students by stigmatizing them. Is it possible that policies, teachers and administrators demonstrated that it was "acceptable" to bully Nex?

[Soloist]

Part of the argument and concern I'm hearing is that Oklahoma's policies about non-binary and transgender students helped exasperate bullying of these students by stigmatizing them. Is it possible that policies, teachers and administrators demonstrated that it was "acceptable" to bully Nex?

Certainly. Impossible to prove and there is bullying in every single school.

[RZehr]

The story here is likely nothing to do with gender ideology, but rather bullying. The question there is what aspect of bullying justifies action from a school?

My son is bullied and he is a bully. The school has a strong stance against it, but they can’t catch everything especially things happening out of view. Unless someone speaks, it wouldn’t be known. Little things happen in front of teachers and children learn what is acceptable to get away with.

These things are interconnected.

According to family and friends, Nex Benedict was bullied because of their gender identity. Did the school create an environment in which it was acceptable to bully students, including non-binary and transgender students? In other words, had students learned that it was "acceptable" to get away with bullying students who didn't fit into a traditional gender paradigm? Posters on this forum have compared transgendered individuals to pedophiles and accused them of grooming children. I am not accusing anyone of anything -- people can believe what they believe -- but isn't it possible that attitudes like this could filter down to someone's children and how they might treat LGBTQ students at school?

On February 26, students at Owasso High School walked out after Nex's suicide in protest about the pervasive bullying at the school --
https://abcnews.go.com/US/student-walko ... =107546201

At Owasso High School in Oklahoma, where nonbinary student Nex Benedict got in a fight with several other students the day before they died, students walked out Monday in protest of bullying and in support of the school's 2SLGBTQ community.

"Our children are scared to death and go to school every day, and something has to stop," one Owasso parent, Susie Eubank, told Tulsa ABC affiliate KTUL. "My child has had direct threats. Direct derogatory names."

Anti-LGBTQ bullying and violence have been the center of conversation in the aftermath of Nex's death earlier this month, as the Benedict family and the local 2SLGBTQ community continue to mourn with vigils and memorials across the state and country.

The family said Nex Benedict's bullying had begun after Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, citing safety concerns, signed a bill into law in May 2022 that barred transgender and gender-expansive youth from using bathrooms consistent with their gender identity.

Part of the argument and concern I'm hearing is that Oklahoma's policies about non-binary and transgender students helped exasperate bullying of these students by stigmatizing them. Is it possible that policies, teachers and administrators demonstrated that it was "acceptable" to bully Nex?

Our school would have long ago asked why the school administrators are creating an environment where cross dressing is acceptable. That is the correct place to question the administration. And then you can talk about bullying too.

Is it possible that policies, teachers and administrators demonstrated that it was "acceptable" to cross dress? Very concerning. Is there no dress code at these schools? I think boys should wear button down shirts and long pants, and girls should wear long dresses.

[RZehr]

All these trans children’s are results of broken families. America doesn’t know how to have functioning families anymore, it has lost that cultural and personal ability. The ability and skill where a man and woman get married, stay married for life, get along, raise many children together, are in their grandchildren’s lives.
Instead we have chaos and confusion and anger in the home, parents split, step-siblings, half-siblings, etc. Children are lost.

[Szdfan]

Part of the argument and concern I'm hearing is that Oklahoma's policies about non-binary and transgender students helped exasperate bullying of these students by stigmatizing them. Is it possible that policies, teachers and administrators demonstrated that it was "acceptable" to bully Nex?

Certainly. Impossible to prove and there is bullying in every single school.

Sure, but when a student commits suicide, it means that something in the school system has gone wrong and it needs to be examined to prevent something similar from happening again.

[Josh]

Okay. So you believe depression to the point of suicide is caused by… people around someone not agreeing to go along with their delusions about them being a different sex than they actually are?

There is a difference between not agreeing to go along with gender delusions/confusions and still treating people, no matter who they are, with kindness, decency and courteousness.

In high school, I was teased and made fun of because I was an obvious Mennonite. I don't think it ever came to the level of bullying though. However as was with Neto, I had loving parents, came from a stable home, and had many Christian friends outside of school. Interestingly some of the higher class girls allowed me to sit with them at lunch. They were the daughters of, one a doctor and the other a dentist, whose fathers treated many Mennonite people in the community. They never participated in the teasing.

I’ve heard the same from other Mennonites who went to public school. Yet there isn’t a suicide epidemic amongst them. That’s why I am saying being ostracised or made fun of is not a reasonable explanation for the sky high suicide attempt rate of trans people.

[Soloist]

Our school would have long ago asked why the school administrators are creating an environment where cross dressing is acceptable. That is the correct place to question the administration. And then you can talk about bullying too.

Is it possible that policies, teachers and administrators demonstrated that it was "acceptable" to cross dress? Very concerning. Is there no dress code at these schools? I think boys should wear button down shirts and long pants, and girls should wear long dresses.

It’s impossible to address cross dressing in a school that already is indoctrinated by local culture.
There are very few schools outside of very religious ones that would require girls to wear dresses exclusively.

Most schools don’t bat an eye at girls wearing pants, less permit boys to wear dresses.
Even in our own society we kind of ignore cross dressing from women because of cultural expectations surrounding us, we would have a serious problem with a male regularly attending our church in a dress, we would expect a woman to eventually start wearing dresses if they stayed.

[Josh]

Bullying can actually kill or cause serious injury, such as happened to a 15 year old girl. She’ll is a white person in a school district that is overwhelmingly black:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... adult.html

She had her head slammed into the concrete repeatedly and is in the hospital right now with serious brain trauma.

I would consider that serious “bullying”, yet there doesn’t seem to be much pressure to do anything about it. In fact, this school district gave itself an award for being “diverse” and scoring well on DE&I, and also fired its on site police officer because the police department didn’t want to take yet more DE&I training.

I don’t think violence like that should happen in a school. (If there was violence against that student who later killed herself, I think that is very bad, although it doesn’t appear she died from bullying injuries.)