Content warning: This story contains mention of transphobia and suicide. Resources are listed at the end of the story.
When 16-year-old Nex Benedict died last February after an altercation at Oklahoma’s Owasso High School, it felt to local LGBTQ+ residents like former Oklahoma State Representative Mauree Turner as if they needed the attention of national media to get anyone in the state to care. “It’s just a haze because the things I remember the most about that time are that we didn’t talk about it,” Turner tells Teen Vogue over the phone in February. “We had to get the nation to talk about it before Oklahoma talked about it.”
Benedict was a trans teen in a state where the government is stacked with officials with anti-trans records, including state school superintendent Ryan Walters. In an interview amid the media melee incited by Benedict’s death, Walters told the New York Times, “There’s not multiple genders….