, the 16-year-old transgender student who died on Feb. 8, a day after allegedly being assaulted in the restroom at Owasso High School in Oklahoma. Although Nex’s death is still being investigated, his grandmother has said he had been bullied in the past for his identity. His death has also drawn scrutiny to far-right influencers like Chaya Raichik, who runs the vehemently anti-a city council member in Oklahoma to accuse Raichik and the school board of having “blood on hands.
In light of Nex’s death, I’ve been considering how a culture of online hate and conservative influencer culture contribute to a degradation of the safety of people like Nex and myself. As a public and out creator for the past many years on Vine, then Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, I have had a front-row seat for the evolving story of how online bullying culture contributes to offline violence against trans people.
I am nonbinary, and I have always been gender-nonconforming. As a kid, I faced violence every day at school. As a young person, I remember how I wished my father could beat the queer out of me so that then I would be lovable. I also remember a deep feeling that no place was safe for me. I have a vivid memory of one day in middle school, I was tripped and called a slur in our school bathroom. I hit the tile floor hard. I recall going down first onto my right kneecap; it stung and throbbed. My soul stung as well. I felt a hollowness in my chest — a deep loneliness. I sensed someone else was in the bathroom, and I looked up, searched the room for help. I locked eyes with my English teacher who was standing at the sink. He was laughing at the scene in front of him.
Almost every right-wing influencer has targeted me. After one particularly cruel post from Libs of TikTok, I received a torrent of abhorrent social media mentions. One woman stitched my video and showed herself listening to me while she loaded a gun. That video received over 300,000 views before TikTok took the video down. I consistently receive death threats, and they are always more intense and more frequent after Raichik posts about me on Libs of TikTok.
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