Vigils took place across the nation for an Oklahoma teenager who died the day after a fight in a high school bathroom in which the nonbinary student said they were a target of bullying.
Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old who identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns, got into an altercation with three girls in an Owasso High School bathroom who were picking on Benedict and some friends. The girls attacked Benedict for pouring water on them, the teen told police in a video released Friday.
Benedict’s mother called emergency responders to the family home the day after the fight, saying Benedict’s breathing was shallow, their eyes were rolling back and their hands were curled, according to audio released by Owasso police.
“My call to you is to stand up and make it clear that is what is being done should not be done in your god’s name,” Lorena said. “Stand up and take back your religion from the conservative right.”
This is nonsense. Religion is conservative. Religion is right-wing. It is all about maintaining ancient notions and morality. Shoving modern progressive ideas into it doesn’t work.
And if it wasn’t for America’s fealty to Christianity, Nex Benedict would still be alive.
Edit: Also, one of my daughter’s closest friends is trans. Of course, since we’re in Indiana, the school refuses to let him use the correct bathroom or locker room and calls him by his deadname despite his own parents calling the school and telling them not to. On Saturday, my daughter told me he got suspended from school. Apparently, a girl was being a bigot towards him and he slapped her. As far as we can tell, the girl didn’t get in trouble at all. We told my daughter to tell her friend that we think he did the right thing and are on his side and the school is wrong.
I’m not sure I agree completely. I think most religion fits into that box but you have things like Gnosticism or some types of Buddhism or Jainism that I don’t find oppressive. Shit, Jesus was executed because he pissed off conservative Hebrews with his more left-wing teachings. His fan club just regularly ignores what they don’t want to hear.
Buddhism sure as hell has oppressed others. The Tibetan caste system where Lamas were on the top and everyone else was basically a slave, for example. And then there’s the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, which was encouraged by the monks.
As for Jainism, it teaches that men are a superior species to women and women cannot attain salvation without being reborn as a man first.
Gnosticism I don’t know much about. Did they preach against slavery? Did they preach about equality between men and women? Did they say that children should be protected from harm? I doubt that they did all three (or other modern progressive ideas), but feel free to disabuse me of that notion.
Part of the problem is that it’s pretty difficult to invent new things for your religion to be for or against when new concepts or technologies arise. Buddhists (despite what I said above) are supposed to refrain from killing. Would Siddhartha Gautama think that AI is alive? If so, is it immoral to ever turn one off? That is a moral question that has a great potential to arise in the very near future and I don’t think any religion is prepared for it.
Women did have power in Gnostic Christian history before the conservative wing of Christianity crushed them. From what I can tell they still had to deal with entrenched Roman sexism but it was still progressive for the time. I’m honestly not sure how they fall on slavery but as they believe that all humans have a piece of god in them I would hope they’d be against it. Part of the trouble is most gnostic writings were destroyed for “heresy”. You’re right that plenty of Buddhists have been horrible, Myanmar right now is a good example. Didn’t know that about Jainism so ty.
I think they might be coloring with a bit of a broad brush, but religion - broadly speaking - is conservative. Some religions may promote values that we agree with and traditionally associate with progressivism (pacifism, egalitarianism, altruism). It’s because they’re based primarily on old or even ancient writings.
I was raised a traditionalist Catholic. I went to catholic school until high school until I went to high school where I became an atheist (which I didn’t even know was an option) and was invited by the school to investigate other educational opportunities.
I also studied Theravada Buddhism for many years. Theravada Buddhism isn’t conservative in the MAGA sense of the word, of course. Especially in the tradition I studied, it concentrates on personal investigation rather than treating the texts and teachings as literally true. A common way of presenting teachings is to say something along the lines of “If it helps, let it help. If not, ignore it.” Still, monks are not permitted (generally speaking) to interact much with women, monks and nuns live separately, and I honestly have no idea how a trans person would fare in that environment.
There’s always a problem when you found the basis of your philosophy in a historical text rather than a constantly evolving understanding. One of Chomsky’s chief complaints about Marxism is that it’s founded on and bound by Marx. He points out correctly that people don’t call evolutionary biology “Darwinism”. I mean, creationists do, and biologists might if they’re referring to a very specific concept, but for 99% of the time we just call it “biology.”
So, building your worldview around a fixed text is by definition conservative. Being flexible about its interpretation can make it less conservative. By and large, though, they’re trying to conserve something.
I can’t speak for all Theravada Buddhist nations, but I found Thailand to be pretty accepting of trans people. Not sure how much of that can be attributed to the religion rather than other factors though.
I feel like the real issue is fundamentalism vs a moderate or reform minded way of thinking. I know plenty of Catholics that are quite liberal and are very loud about their disagreements with church dogma, which I’ve found encouraging.
At the end of the day, I consider religion a tool that can be used positively or negatively as a part of a person’s identity. Doesn’t even need to be religion per se, I’ve seen people use a part of their identify positively where another uses the same identity negatively. For example, I might use my love for video games to bond with friends or raise money for charity while others take that same passion and make death threats to devs they are upset with or swat a streamer. A bit of a tortured analogy but I hope it’s at least somewhat coherent.
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
I was thinking of Thailand in particular since that was where my studies were grounded and my understanding is that the general conceptualization of gender is not identical to western approaches. I do tend to try to steer away from terms like “trans” when talking about other cultures because I’m not sure how well the western idea of a trans person translates into cultures with different ideas of genders. I know enough to know that I don’t know enough, but I do know that what we in the US consider LGBT has absolutely no relation to Ancient Greece or modern Thailand.
But I do know that there’s gender-based separation in most of the Thai monasteries that I’m familiar with, and that monks are conscious of sexually based attractions as distractions to be avoided. I strongly suspect that a person we consider trans would be accepted as a nun - at least, in a non-western, traditional order. But that’s based on my overall readings - it’s really weird to realize that I’ve never even thought to ask that question.
What he did is illegal everywhere. In general, society condemns responding to hurtful words with hurtful physical violence.
The problem is likely the school - especially since you indicated she never got into any trouble. Schools are tightly constrained environments - students can’t legally do things adults in the real world generally can, like simply leave. That gives the school a hefty extra burden of responsibilities, including protecting the students from things like hurtful words (which they can do in spades, since the students also have no free speech rights to worry about). I’m completely unsurprised this school failed its responsibility. I, too, went to public school, and I remember all the bullying it consistently let slide.
I have never heard of a child getting arrested for slapping another child.
I believe you.
There are many religious liberals.
There are closer to twice as my Christian liberals than unaffiliated to religion liberals.
Well then maybe they shouldn’t embrace iron age morality.
The liberal Christians?
Yep. Not only do they worship someone who they claim is the font of wisdom but never said a thing about rape or slavery, they also have a follow-up writer who hates women and gay people and a prequel book full of horrors.
On top of that, their savior very clearly says that anyone who doesn’t worship him goes to hell. John 3:18 if you’re curious.
So if by ‘liberal Christians’ you mean ‘Christians who reject their own religious text’ then maybe they need a new religion that they actually agree with.
If you don’t believe in God why do you care about hell? Christians can worship God and have beliefs that aren’t aligned with government policy. You think Christianity is a political party? Christians don’t vote (and should not vote) by the Bible. If they did the republican party nor the democratic party would align with their beliefs if they held them true to the bible. You don’t need to reject biblical text when you vote for either party. But you do reject biblical text when you vote for the sake of “owning” or any form of despising another human.
Jesus was pretty specific to give unto the governments of the world what they demand. Christians aren’t to create a Christian nation on earth, because the political body of christ (the temple) is not the physical land of a nation, but the heart of the people living in any nation.
I’m talking about their archaic and backward beliefs, not what I care about.
Jesus was pretty specific to give unto the governments of the world what they demand.
Yes. He was also pretty specific about anyone not believing in him deserving eternal torture. And he totally lacked specificity when it came to things like slavery and rape- but took the time to talk about why divorce was bad. Why would you venerate such a person?
Christ didn’t come to change social or economic structure. His teachings were aimed at the orientation of the heart and soul. His stance on how you treat slaves as well as how you are to serve are clear on where your heart should be, while not speaking of current social or economical structures.
I’m not here to argue or defend Christ. I made my comment just to say Christianity and many religions are not strictly aligned to conservatism as it comes in political parties.
I wonder if the concept of religion itself is conservative or if it just attracts that kind of person? My understanding is that most religions’ holy texts are effectively just guide books on how not to be a dick to others (not that religious people actually read them that way). I wish someone would do a study to explore this cognitive dissonance in more depth
How not to be a dick to others- based on ancient moral ideas of what that means.
Do you know what Jesus never said? “Do not enslave people.” That simple sentence could have saved how many lives? But slavery was fine 2000 years ago, so he never said it.
Which is why religion is conservative.
That’s a great point. I was being kind of reductive.
Perhaps religion’s most zealous followers tend to be people who have trouble contextualising information? That would certainly help explain why the "I got mine proceeds to pull up ladder " attitude is so prevalent there…
Anyway, I don’t want to come across like I’m arguing with you.I didn’t think you were arguing, no worries. It was just a friendly discussion in my perspective.
From a compass perspective for the most part I would say religion is vaguely conservative because it tends to create a hierarchy of people whom are influenced by a very specific historical tradition and designate people trusted to serve as it’s custodians. Since people like power there is generally an incentive for people in those positions to enjoy the perks of being an authority.
But you know what… That doesn’t matter.
I think that completely dismissing the idea of religion as a force for Progressive change in the sphere of Social Democracy is misguided. People believe in religions because the underlying concepts represent a framing device of the world that makes sense to them. Subscribing to a an organized power structure is actually kind of an independent factor.
Schisms in favor of progressive changes happen throughout history from time to time and their impact should be noted. While a lot of Churches signed on to assist in the brewing holocaust there did exist a distinct Christian resistance to Nazi persecution of Jewish people and political dissidents helped save hundreds thousands of people from the camps by organized evacuation. Many of the people did so because of their convictions of faith and some died for it.
The sharp dismissal of people of faith as potential allies in the fight or their conceptualization of their faith’s teachings is to my mind misguided and selfish. It shows you place your own religious traumas and prejudices above the value of creating allyship to keep the people you profess to care about safe. Changing religions from the inside to more broadly embrace a kinder and enduring new interpretation of doctrine and tradition has value. Making other allies feel welcome and making use of what they have to offer is key to actually winning this fight. This should not be the time or place to puff out your chest and proclaim “I am more moral than they are!” we don’t have time for petty squabbles about whether a belief in Christianity makes you a bad leftist. We of the trans community need help and this choosing beggar mentality of allies rejecting and scorning each other is against our needs.
American Christianity*
Like everything America does, it’s much further right than the equivalent in Europe.
Nope. All Christianity. Europe is more progressive despite Christianity, not because of it. Which is also why Europe is, in general, far more secular than America and has far more non-religious people.
It was a relatively short time ago when Europe was imposing Christianity on a lot of the rest of the world and making laws which forbade things they considered to be non-Christian.
Fight?
Sounds kinda consensual, id argue bathroom assault fits better.
I mean no offense, but the article says the victim told police the fight started when they poured water on the girls. I’m not saying the girls did or didn’t deserve it, and I’m not condoning anyone’s actions, but that sounds like a fight. Probably not a fair fight, but a fight.
But to be fair, the police also said the initial autopsy showed the fight and the death were “unrelated,” which is suspicious at best, so who knows if we can trust what they say?
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I believe that autopsies are often not reliable / have repeatable results. They’re called out in Kahneman’s book Noise as being among the more noisy “sciences.” I have a particular distrust when I think there may be a political or ideological motivation behind the results, such as in this case or in killings by police officers.
Did they say what was the cause of the death then?
No but shallow breathing, curling hands and eyes rolling back sounds like a brain bleed or drug overdose
