Nex Benedict and the Violence of ‘Real’ Girls

When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to cut my hair short because, according to my mother, it would be “chopping off my femininity.”

Many gender deconstructions and short haircuts later, I’m 26 now, and I have been out as a nonbinary woman for three years. The term “nonbinary woman” feels like a way to honor the personal and political ‘woman’ experiences I’ve had and my bond with women and fems while still being so genderqueer that I am not even committing to being inside or outside of the binary.

It is a dangerous time to be a woman, especially if you are nonwhite or noncishet. My mother’s weird attachment to the length of my hair pales next to the increasingly devastating price of the elusive standard of who gets to be called a “real” girl or woman and what that entails.

It seems like “real” girl vibes of the moment include, but aren’t limited to, being cishet, white, wealthy, Christian, having long hair (preferably straight, or maybe sea-salt tousled at most), being emotionally pliable, curvy and skinny all at once, virginal or close to it, enthusiastically able to conceive and reproduce in their own bodies, and not chronically ill or disabled.

And that “real” label has to be earned and maintained on credit. You have to be an ambassador of the patriarchy, enforcing it against girls and fems who are ‘deviant’ by way of being nonwhite, queer, or otherwise threatening to power. After all, if you grant legitimacy to femininity the patriarchy wouldn’t approve of, your status is in danger as well.

That exclusion has dire, violent consequences on the ground, and you can see some of them at play in the recent death of Nex Benedict.

Nex (they/he) was a nonbinary 16-year-old and child of a Choctaw nation member in Oklahoma. They were attacked by their peers in the girls’ bathroom at school, sustained head injuries, and died the day afterward after collapsing with their hands “posturing up,” a common sign of head trauma. An official autopsy report has classified Nex’s death a suicide and local prosecutors say they won’t press charges, though calls for independent investigation remain, and the Department of Education is looking into discrimination at the school.

Attacks on young queer and trans people have become commonplace thanks to right-wing activists, Christian nationalists, and conspiracy theorists targeting schools, libraries, and other public institutions. Suicide and suicide attempts among trans people and queer people, especially kids, have dramatically increased alongside these attacks and this backlash: The climate of hostility created by these attacks and this rhetoric is truly unsurvivable. But the notable and disquieting part of the attack against Nex is that it wasn’t done by a Patriot Front asshole in khakis or a belligerent parent amped up on propaganda from OAN. Nex had previously been bullied for their gender, and on the day of this incident, they were with a trans girl classmate in the bathroom and faced more harassment. It escalated, and they were beaten on the ground by their own peers, specifically young women — girls who were not even legal adults yet but were already doing the patriarchy’s most violent enforcement tasks.

Underneath the brutality of the incident, there’s an undercurrent of a desperate plea: we’re the good girls, the real girls, the normal girls. In exchange for our loyalty to the gods of patriarchy and gender, we will direct the violence instead of being victims of it ourselves again.

It’s not lost on me that Nex, a child of Native ancestry, died on stolen land at the hands of girls upholding zealous Christian colonial ideals of gender. In 2024, our society still wants women to consume and be consumed in specific ways, shushing the ways genderqueer women and people have existed throughout history in Native cultures and beyond. It is Barbie feminism, not bell hooks feminism. Gatekeeping the bathroom and girlbossing genocide, not guarding against fascism.

In my late teens, when I was out as bisexual but not nonbinary, I was desperately replicating that materialistic femininity, trying to make the apparel of Womanhood™ fit me. Some of it was Trauma Drag on my part, straightening my hair, getting lip fillers, wearing makeup and shoes I hated. I thought that if I got that womanhood right, all of my other problems would go away. I’d be safe, I’d be secure.

Society tells girls that all the time. One of the most difficult realizations I’ve had as a young fem is learning, repeatedly and painfully, that being able to pass as a “real girl” or “real woman” does not protect me or anyone else. No matter how good you are at playing the patriarchy’s game, the goalposts will always eventually change on you. Systems of power always find reasons why they don’t have to consider women real when it’s inconvenient to do so. Your realness can be revoked at any time to justify terrible things. And even if you manage to float your way across those eggshells, the “prize” is being treated like the patriarchy’s “real woman,” stiff and subservient to gender roles.

When I unpacked how ill-fitting the gender binary had been for me, I wondered where to place my complicated baggage on the border of femininity. I felt like I was in both worlds, woman and not woman. But at the time, I spoke to other nonbinary people and read the work of other nonbinary women. I saw that this particular label encapsulated the yes, and feeling I couldn’t put words to myself. It felt like home.

I go back and forth in ways that aren’t easily definable. I’ve thrived in building solidarity and awareness around sexual assault survivor organizing, fighting for reproductive justice, institutional equality, and more for all and everything related to womanhood.

To me, that is what the word woman conjures: supporting one another, hyping each other up, driving off creeps in various settings. Those are the things that make a woman for me, not an evangelical club with a bouncer who checks what your genitals look like, whether you’re able to carry a pregnancy, or how long your hair is. That "real" womanhood/girlhood/femininity is about caring for your siblings, nurturing your community, and loving each other.

But there are some people whose relationship with femininity is devoid of any real feminism, where one of the worst things you could do is think or look differently. Some people want to build walls wherever they can, conquering womanhood and hunting genderqueerness. Nex Benedict was a victim of girls who were taught to gatekeep gender at all costs.

I wonder where the girls who gatekeep bathrooms think I belong. I know that I am still growing and maturing as a nonbinary woman – as a human being. I also feel more in touch with my womanhood than ever, but I have a feeling that some people would think that I’m less of a real girl than I’ve ever been. I am OK with that. I hope all my fellow young women and fems choose to value each other’s humanity instead of the false trophies of womanhood and femininity.