While the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old “nonbinary” girl and Oklahoma student, has quickly attracted national media attention, National Review writer Madeleine Kearns noted on today’s Editors episode that few facts are currently known about the case.
“This is a classic example of something where nobody’s really paused to wait for the facts, and they’ve just gone straight full steam ahead with their narrative,” Kearns said.
“This was a 16-year-old girl who had an altercation in a school restroom with three other girls. I think they teased her, she poured water on them, and then she alleged that they beat her. And then the next day, she takes a lethal overdose of various pills and . . . her death was accurately ruled as suicide. But we don’t know if she was bullied for being nonbinary as she identified.”
Kearns cautioned listeners, “We don’t know the nature of the altercation. We really don’t know anything beyond those facts I’ve just given you. In fact, the New York Times report quite responsibly says as much.”
U.S. political figures and others have taken up the story and begun to spin it, however, Kearns said. “These things happen and are seized upon by activists in a very horrible way, and I think that this is just a case where when people bring these things up you have to say, ‘What is your evidence that this is what caused this? Please provide me with the facts, because they have not yet been reported.’”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.