Trans hate is big business. Guys like Nex Benedict die as a result

I was I think a lot about Nex Benedict, the 16-year-old transgender student who died on February 8, a day after he was allegedly assaulted in a bathroom at Owasso High School in Oklahoma. Although Nex's death is still under investigation, his grandmother said he had been bullied in the past because of his identity. (Although early reports identified him as gender non-binary, close friends have since told NBC News that he identified as transgender and preferred his/her pronouns.) anti-LGBTQ Libs TikTok account and was recently appointed to the State Library board in his home state of Oklahoma. The death of Benedict is prompted a city council member in Oklahoma to accuse Raichik and the school board of “having blood [their] hands.” (On social media, Raichik has repeatedly denied fueling a culture of anti-LGBTQ hate and violence.)

In light of Nex's death, I've been thinking about how a culture of online hate and the culture of conservative influencers are helping to degrade the safety of people like Nex and me. As a viewer and creator over the past several years on Vine, then Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, I've had a front-row seat to the evolving story of how cyberbullying culture contributes to offline violence against transgender people. I have seen my personal life turned upside down by baseless accusations from conservative influencers.

I am non-binary and have always been gender non-conforming. As a child, I faced violence every day at school. As a youngster, I remember wishing my father would queer me so I could be lovable. I also remember a deep feeling that no place was safe for me.

I have a vivid memory of a day in high school, being tripped up and called a swear word in our school bathroom. I hit the tiled floor hard. I remember landing on my right knee first. it stung and throbbed. My soul stung too. I felt a hollowness in my chest—a deep loneliness. I felt someone else was in the bathroom, and I looked up, looking around the room for help. I locked eyes with my English teacher who was standing at the sink. He was laughing at the scene before him. The hollow feeling in my chest grew a little as I felt the weight of the shameful thought that the bullying was my fault.

I have dedicated my life and activism to making sure no one receives the treatment I did as a child. I am well known on TikTok and have been a non-binary public figure for over 10 years. I have two bestselling books, the second of which was named “Best Book of the Month” by Apple Books. In my most viral video, which garnered over 30 million views, I simply said, “I can predict the future and you'll be fine.” I hope to impart comfort and a deep sense of belonging and relief to anyone who has ever been told there is something wrong with them. By embracing my queerness, I hope to teach that what a man is told to hide can be his gateway to freedom and his greatest contribution to the world. Through this viral message of kindness, I became the first non-binary person to be interviewed on national television in 2016.

Almost every right-wing influencer has targeted me. After a particularly harsh post by the TikTok Libs, I received a deluge of vile references on social media. A woman stitched up my video and pretended to be listening while she loaded a gun. This video had over 300,000 views before TikTok removed the video. I get death threats all the time and they are always louder and more frequent after Raichik posts about me on TikTok Libs. It all came to a head last year when the police came to my house to search for a bomb. All of this stems from my dual mission to help everyone be less self-hating and more accepting of trans people.

There is a clear link between cyberbullying and offline threats. According to recent study from the National Institute of Health, LGBTQ youth are more likely to experience anonymous forms of cyberbullying, and the cyberbullying they experience is often an extension of offline bullying. But I only recently realized that on some accounts, cyberbullying is a big deal. With every trans person Raichik targets, her online following grows. Her current following on X is over two and a half million, and she's speaking at conservative events, including CPAC in 2023, giving her huge reliability to the right. When she posts about me, I receive violent death threats while her popularity grows.

But it doesn't stop there. Right-wing creators feed off each other in an overwhelming pipeline of hate that turns trans danger into dollars. First, Libs of TikTok posts about me. Then Matt Walsh. Then Praeger U and other online stores. And finally, if you're very unlucky, like I was in 2020, Fox News will “pick up” your story. Tucker Carlson played my TikTok on air. I needed to take several steps to hide my identity and whereabouts online and offline. I could not sleep for many days, nor leave my house. My husband was supportive but also worried about my mental health as he tried to support me through a really difficult time.

These stores are constantly instilling fear and pushing their followers to sign up and click on ads, buy their books, and send them donations. Conservative influencers are jeopardizing trans lives as their business model. NBC News recently reported that since November 2020, there have been 21 bomb threats made to schools, hospitals and other institutions shortly after one of the Libs of TikTok posts. (Raichik denies having anything to do with these threats, telling a tweet on the NBC News story, “this 'b*mb threat' narrative is really old.”) The violence that leads to the deaths of trans and non-binary kids like Nex Benedict occurs while influencers like Raichik make checks on cash.

The business of trans hate has affected me and my mission. And, of course, online conservative discourse contributes to the dehumanization of trans people, which in turn incites violence against us. I can't help but wonder if Nex would still be here, alive and well, if conservative 'influencers' weren't painting a target on our backs with every effort to get more clicks.