the more we find out about Nex Benedict's murder, the more i see the similarities between their story and mine.
this could have been me a few years ago.
i was bullied by people i didn't know, which the transmisics are portraying as contradictory. they think because Nex said they didn't know the girls who killed them, it's untrue that they bullied Nex for months before, even though that's what they said. they completely interpret "i don't know them" in the most bad-faith way possible as "i have never seen them until today", because actually acknowledging the context doesn't fit their narrative.
a lot of the people who bullied me were people who weren't in my class, weren't even in my year. they were random younger people who would harass me as i walked through the school. at some point i recognised their voices and the kinds of comment they'd make, maybe even recognise what they look like. but i didn't know them. you don't have to know your bullies for the bullying to be real. especially in a society that teaches kids to "ignore their bullies" it's really not that unlikely for someone not to know who their bullies are.
Nex's story is a prime example of how teaching kids to "ignore their bullies and it will go away" is actively harmful because
a) the lack of action teaches bullies that bullying is okay, they will not stop,
b) ignoring bullies means bottling up all the feelings about being bullied until it's finally too much and the victim defends themself, which bullies use as an excuse to be more aggressive (and kids are still learning how to deal with their emotions too which makes all of this even harder) and
c) if the bullying ever escalates, you not knowing your bullies because you ignored them can be absolutely used against you by claiming the bullying wasn't actually real.
and children are inclined to take adults' bullshit advice on how to "deal with" bullies, none of this is ever the kid's fault.
and it looks like all of these points apply to Nex's case. society has utterly failed victims of bullying.
and we also need to acknowledge that bullying doesn't happen in a vacuum. bullying is a symptom of systemic oppression. most bullying victims hold some kind of marginalised identity and i don't know any marginalised people who haven't experienced any bullying. like, of course society teaching kids that marginalised people are bad will lead to bullying, and of course the anti-trans hate campaign raises kids to be violent.
looking back, it's so obvious that when i was bullied for being "ugly", they were referring to me being gnc, visibly blind and fat and they bullied me for being weird they were referring to me being gnc, ND and blind. the slurs and direct references aren't the only way that bullying is targeted at marginalised identities. and when i had too many emotions bottled up, i too would defend myself by shouting back at them or other harmless things. yes, splashing people with some water is HARMLESS, it's not assault and it's nothing compared to what these cis girls put Nex through months before, let alone literally murdering them. being both nonbinary AND indigenous, Nex was even more likely to go through this as a multiply marginalised person.
bullying is abuse. bullying is a direct result of systemic oppression and thus it is a human rights issue. and basically telling marginalised kids to suck it up ain't it.
Nex's case is terrifying because from what we know it went from being only verbal for months to immediately beating them to death as soon as they dared to defend themself. this could have been me a few years ago. i'm terrified for all our marginalised kids.
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