NVN Sunday: NEX
by Jeremy Nathan Marks
In his three years as state superintendent for Oklahoma’s public schools, Ryan Walters, a former high school history teacher, has transformed himself into one of the most strident culture warriors in a state known for sharp-edged conservative politics. Following the death earlier this month of a 16-year-old nonbinary student a day after an altercation in a high school girls’ bathroom, gay and transgender advocates accused Mr. Walters of having fomented an atmosphere of dangerous intolerance within public schools. In his first interview reacting to the death of the student, Nex Benedict, Mr. Walters told The New York Times that the death was a tragedy, but that it did not change his views on how questions of gender should be handled in schools. “There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,” Mr. Walters said, saying he did not believe that nonbinary or transgender people exist. He said that Oklahoma schools would not allow students to use preferred names or pronouns that differ from their birth sex. “You always treat individuals with dignity or respect, because they’re made in God’s image,” Mr. Walters said. “But that doesn’t change truth.” —The New York Times, February 23, 2024. A state senator [Oklahoma Republican State Sen. Tom Woods] said during a public forum in Tahlequah that LGBTQ+ people are “filth,” and that he and his constituents don’t want them in “our state.” —Tahlequah Daily Press, February 23, 2024. The police released video of the student, Nex Benedict, recounting the altercation a day before their death, which has drawn national scrutiny. —The New York Times, February 24, 2024
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People insist flyover country gets a bad rap. It’s a place of trigger happy Trumpy fundamentalists and bigots, dull and flat, filled with hate incensed that Jackson could be replaced by Tubman on the twenty where school principals don’t call ambulances when students are beaten for being who they are and thanks to someone named Chaya you can’t access the works of Toni Morrison or Kwame Alexander don’t you dare mention Harry Potter. In the past I’ve insisted you can find fine dining excellent wine and terrific company anywhere beauty is in the eye of the beholder the flatlands are profound places perfect for soul searching silence and now there are fine vineyards everywhere, even places where few people if anyone speak French. But I feel prepared to recant any previous defense because you won’t be killed for using a bathroom just anywhere. The State of Oklahoma has decided it officially, legally hates people who see themselves as people first, rather than female or male and so a person —aren’t we all people first— named Nex died after they a person used a bathroom for girls but some other girls backed by the State of Oklahoma decided Nex shouldn’t because they wouldn’t say (like Beyoncé once did) if I were a boy it makes me think of the old bad days when people of color had to piss their pants because of No Service they could not be caught taking a leak in the street or out back of a building since the law always in vigilante hands would catch them dead for answering nature’s call. Oh, nature. Evil since Eve ate the apple. The State of Oklahoma seems to think nothing has changed since fictional Adam couldn’t die when someone reached into his chest cavity—in a time before antiseptics— and stole his rib, to plant in the Earth all so this curious miracle could be betrayed by one of only two genders. I want to ask those legislators in flyover Oklahoma and the 10 states whose lawgivers spend their time snooping in stalls (I want to ask my question preferably to their face) And who’s the snake?
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Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears/will appear in Terrain.org, Belt, Rattle, Wilderness House, Mad In America, Writers Resist, Poetica Review, and Unlikely Stories. Jeremy’s latest book is Flint River published by Alien Buddha Press 2023.