In February 2024, I had top surgery — a form of gender-affirming care that was recently labeled “mutilation” by the president of the United States in one of the many heinous executive orders he issued since his inauguration.
A year ago, in the post-anesthesia care unit of a New Jersey hospital, a nurse clacked at a keyboard while I opened and closed my eyes slowly, not yet conscious enough to remember someone had just operated on my chest. She asked me how I was feeling and placed a small Styrofoam cup of crushed ice on the bedside table. As I picked up the cup with a weak grasp and crushed frozen water between my teeth, I began to recall why I was there. When I tried to put the cup back down, it slipped from my hand and hit the ground. “I’m so sorry,” I slurred, still in a twilight of anesthetics and euphoria, my brain so blissed out by the thought of finally having a flat chest that I was completely numb to the pain.
That same week, 16-year-old Nex Benedict woke up on the floor of their school bathroom after having their head repeatedly slammed into the tile, after having “blacked out” as they described hours later when police were finally contacted.
When I read the news about Nex, a nonbinary teenager in southwest America who reportedly used both he/him and they/them pronouns, I pictured them on that bathroom floor and wondered if they felt numb. I wondered if they dissociated from their body, from the present moment, floating their brain to someplace else — someplace happier — despite the inevitable swelling. Or maybe he felt everything. Maybe he felt a magnified sense of dysphoria — the furthest opposite of euphoria — having been attacked for existing as his authentic self.
My mother thought I would die on the operating table. She told me at least one hundred times, “It’s a major surgery!” and “It’s risky!” I knew it was major and I was already well acquainted with risk as it pertained to the way I present my body in the world. But I did not die. After I dropped that cup of ice in the PACU, I came to in a post-op room where a new nurse called my mom and my wife and told them they could come see me. When they walked in to find me sitting upright, my mom’s relief was palpable. I smiled and I could see the fear shed from her body. Everything was lighter.
I chewed the driest graham cracker I’d ever tasted as the nurse showed my wife how to strip blood from the drain tubes hanging out of my sides. My chest was covered by mounds of gauze pads and a black compression vest, so I couldn’t see anything — I couldn’t yet see myself. But I too was relieved. I too shed a weight.
After Nex was examined by a doctor and cleared for release from the hospital, Sue Benedict likely did not imagine he would die. Nex referred to Sue, their biological grandmother and legal guardian, as “mom.” The attack in the school bathroom left the high schooler with bruises all over his round, baby-shaped face and scratches on his scalp that lay beneath an androgynous haircut. The school didn’t call an ambulance, despite the blood on the floor, so Sue took him to a nearby hospital.
Nex went home after being examined, and after police visited and told them the incident would be considered a “mutual fight” that Nex “initiated essentially.” Sue told reporters her child went to bed and drifted off to music as he usually did. Perhaps he cried himself to sleep fighting off the voices in his head that told him the world would be a better place without him. Perhaps his bruises ached as he dreamt about getting revenge on his bullies. We don’t know. We do know he collapsed the next day. Nex’s mom watched as his eyes rolled back in his head and he stopped breathing. Later that day, in a pediatric emergency room, Nex was declared dead.
The first time I met with my surgeon in hopes of scheduling top surgery, it was over a video call. She asked me questions about myself — typical ones, like, “Where are you from?” and “What do you do for work?” Then she asked me to tell her about myself: how I understand my gender, how I’d arrived at the decision to have tissue carved out of my chest with a scalpel. I told her how each day when I got dressed, the reflection of my chest in the mirror made me recoil, how my back constantly ached from wearing a binder any time I left the house, how I had reached a point where I recognized that if I get one body and one lifetime, I have the right to feel comfortable in it. She listened intently, nodding from the other side of my phone screen.
It sometimes feels shameful to be a 31-year-old who has only just begun to fully understand themself. But the surgeon understood me as “human,” trusting that I knew what was best for me — that her patients know what is best for them — a concept that conservative politicians are hellbent on ignoring, regardless of the data demonstrating a less-than-1% regret rate for folks who undergo gender-affirming surgery. They are especially insistent on stripping trans people 19 years or younger of their bodily autonomy, even though only 0.04% of trans youth receive gender-related surgery, as most gender-affirming care for minors typically entails social transition or puberty blockers with reversible effects.
But as an adult receiving gender-affirming care in New Jersey, a liberal-leaning state, every nurse checked my chart and confirmed my pronouns at each appointment before and after surgery. No one made assumptions. In the pre-op hospital room, the nurse who slid an IV needle into the vein on my hand was likely in her 60s. She laughed with me about the ugliness of the hospital gown as she tied it above my naked back. Despite the difference in our generations, I did not feel judged for the procedure I was about to undergo. This sense of comfort was afforded to me over and over again throughout the entire process, ensuring I was not ostracized, not “othered.”
Nex Benedict attended Owasso High School in Owasso, Oklahoma. Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of Oklahoma’s public schools, has made it abundantly clear no schools in the state will allow students to use pronouns or names that differ from the ones they were assigned at birth. Walters has argued publicly that nonbinary and transgender people do not exist, adding to recent arguments made by other conservatives who have coined and weaponized the made-up term “transgenderism,” labeling it an ideology of “wokeness.”
A teacher at Owasso High School whom Nex admired — whom Nex probably felt comfortable being themself with — was forced to resign in 2022 after Chaya Raichik, the online personality behind Libs of TikTok, the far-right social media account, criticized him publicly. The teacher faced a slew of harassment, prompting him to leave his position. Walters then appointed Raichik to a state committee responsible for reviewing the appropriateness of books in school libraries.
It’s clear Nex’s school district does not care about the comfort of queer and trans kids, nor does it care if students are made to feel “othered.” Owasso trans students have cited strict bathroom laws and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric as the impetus for constant bullying, which will only become more dangerous with Trump’s recent executive order targeting educators who support their LGBTQ+ students. Much like Nex, for eight hours a day, five days a week, many queer and trans youth are forced to learn in an environment where those in charge reject them — loudly and openly — under the guise of “protecting” them.
When I was in high school, we didn’t talk about gender critically. We didn’t have the vocabulary for it. I hated wearing dresses or skirts, much preferred board shorts to bikini bottoms, and often tried to imitate the mannerisms of my guy friends. We did talk about sexuality. We called things “gay” when we meant “corny,” and called each other “fag” when we meant “annoying.” The few kids everyone knew were gay were bullied mercilessly.
When someone started a rumor that I was a lesbian, everyone jumped on the bandwagon, whispering about it in the hallways, messaging about it on AIM. I was in such deep denial and repression about my sexuality that I knew “lesbian” only to be an insult, something I needed to defend myself against. I seethed with rage. I wanted nothing more than to ball my fist up and launch it square into the faces of the “popular” girls who wanted everyone to think differently of me. But I was never brave enough to stand up for myself. I wouldn’t be comfortable enough to come out until adulthood. In the meantime, I worked to make myself invisible, dressing like all the other girls, kissing all the boys, blending in.
Neither in denial or full of shame, Nex was 16 and proudly able to identify themself as nonbinary, to assert their true identity to the world. They were a straight-A student who loved reading, cooking, and caring for their cat. They had friends who undoubtedly loved and admired them, like their trans friend who entered the bathroom with them the day of the incident.
A group of three girls had reportedly been repeatedly bullying Nex and his friend, “making comments, calling them names, and throwing things at them,” as Sue Benedict recalled her child telling her days before the attack. Those three girls reportedly began making fun of the way Nex laughed, so he poured water on the girls. In response, the girls pulled Nex’s feet out from under him and beat him until he blacked out. The next day, he was dead.
Nearly a month after the attack, Nex’s death was ruled a suicide. Prior to making that determination, the Owasso Police Department released a statement claiming that “the decedent did not die as a result of trauma” after reviewing the initial results of his autopsy. It’s hard to trust a corrupt system hellbent on making queer and trans kids’ lives a living hell, but even if that statement was true, perhaps what they should have said was “the decedent did not die as a result of head trauma.” Because for too many queer and trans kids in Oklahoma, to attend school is trauma. To be constantly tormented by your peers for not fitting into a predetermined narrative is trauma. To find yourself — to find happiness — only to have it stripped away day by day, bit by bit, until living no longer seems a viable option, surely is trauma.
The day of Nex’s funeral, I was lying comfortably on my couch watching bad reality television with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s resting on my mastectomy pillow. My incisions were healing slowly beneath my compression vest and while I wouldn’t see my new chest for another week until my first post-op appointment, I was elated. My wife kept an organized record of how much fluid my drains collected and a careful schedule of my rotating over-the-counter pain meds. My coworkers sent me a digital card full of well wishes. My friends showed up for me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I felt grateful — proud even — to have made a decision toward my own happiness, my own affirmation. I looked forward to regaining strength and range of motion and eventually reentering the world authentically myself.
But there was something that nagged at me as I sat propped up against fluffy pillows, enjoying ice cream as I recovered, and reposted an infographic to Instagram about a child being beaten half to death for not conforming to gender norms. There was something sinister about celebrating a gender-affirming surgery while it was (and still is) illegal for high school kids to access any gender-affirming care in Oklahoma and several other states (and soon, perhaps, everywhere in this country). There was something disturbing about waking up from anesthesia as a new person while a family prepared to say their final goodbyes to their loved one.
For some, Nex Benedict’s death was just another tragedy, just another “that’s a shame” on a long list of atrocities America has become numb to. I hope it was a wakeup call for others. For me, it was a stark reminder that as free as I may feel, I live in a country that would rather I die, than be myself — a notion that has only grown more obvious with a new administration that is perversely intent on eradicating queer and trans people. But I won’t let this be the end. We owe it to Nex to fight for equality, basic human rights, and the opportunity to be — to fully live each day as — no one but ourselves.
Go Ad-Free — And Protect The Free Press
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Jackie Domenus (they/she) is a queer writer from New Jersey. Their first book, “No Offense: A Memoir In Essays,” was published with ELJ Editions in February 2025. A former Sundress Academy for the Arts resident and Tin House Workshop graduate, Jackie’s work has appeared in The Normal School, The Offing, Pidgeonholes, Foglifter Journal, and elsewhere. Find more from her at byjackied.com.
Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at [email protected].