There were a number of potential factors that could have led to the death of Dagny Benedict, the 16-year-old biological female who chose to live as a male who went by the name "Nex."
A fight with other students in a school bathroom was not one of those factors, Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, the Family Research Council’s director for the center of family studies, said on Washington Watch Tuesday.
Indeed, gender identification is often just the tip of the iceberg of complications for people choosing to identify as something other than their biological sex, Bauwens told show host Jody Hice.
Bauwens believes that was the case for Benedict at the time of her suicide, a day after the bathroom fight, in February.
An autopsy report released March 14 found that Benedict, a student at Owasso High School, died of toxicity from diphenhydramine, an antihistamine, and fluoxetine, an anti-depression medication.
Dr. Eric Pfeifer, Oklahoma’s chief medical examiner, ruled suicide as the cause of death.
Compare that official announcement with a student walkout at Owasso High over the claim Benedict died because of anti-LGBT bullying in the bathroom fight.
“In this case, the medical examiner said about this young woman that she was diagnosed with bipolar, she had anxiety, depression. And she was self-harming and using substances like marijuana. She was using them chronically," Bauwens said. "These are all things that point to someone with a trauma history, even if we didn’t have the court documents released."
Victims of trauma, an emotional response to a terrible event, often face a wide range of ills, Bauwens said.
In the case of Dagny Benedict, it included year-long sexual abuse by her father, RedState.com reported.
Democrats ran with 'anti-trans fervor'
“What happens is trauma victims are often given a lot of different diagnoses, and this girl, bipolar, depression, anxiety, all of these things can be symptoms of someone who’s gone through trauma and childhood sexual abuse, definitely the self-harming behaviors," Bauwens said. "These are things that somebody who was clear-headed and looking for these kinds of signs would detect that and say ‘Let’s investigate this, let’s see what’s going on with her, does she need help to sort through these traumas,’ but instead, not only has this girl been abused and mistreated in her lifetime, but now in her own death she’s been abused and mistreated by a political agenda."
The agenda appears in how quickly various news outlets and politicians jumped on the bathroom fight as the cause of death.
The New Republic, before the autopsy report, ran a story with a sensationalized headline blaming Oklahoma Republicans.
Gender dysphoria and its symptoms are rarely mentioned if ever.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was confident enough – or irresponsible enough – to report Benedict’s cause of death as a “brutal assault” in a high school bathroom and to blame Republicans.
“The anti-trans fervor fueled by extreme Republicans across the country is having deadly consequences for our children,” she wrote on X.
President Biden’s official statement didn’t name Republicans but called on all Americans to “recommit our work to end discrimination.” It also let young people know they can text or call the National Crisis Hotline “to talk to a counselor who has been specifically trained to support LGBTQI+ youth.”
“We have people who aren’t willing to look at root issues, and they’re just pushing an agenda and a narrative the best they can,” Bauwens said.
That’s because “the facts are so lacking on their side. The science is so lacking, and the reports are increasing of true psychological harm that these procedures impose on kids. The only narrative they really have is this idea of ‘kids are being bullied,’” she said.
But the very fact that a child is bullied should set off warning bells for a need to delve deeper into that child’s background.
“Kids who have gone through childhood traumas are often bullied because they’re going through things that are so different than their peers who aren’t being abused. When you see a kid being bullied that’s also a warning sign. ‘Do I need to find out what’s going on in the home or in this kid’s social setting?’ That’s not always the case, but it’s often the case that kids who have major childhood disruptions can be bullied,” Bauwens said.
Where did this all start?
The fierce devotion to the gender narrative goes back to Magnus Hirschfeld in the pre-World War II Era.
A German Jew forced to live in exile after the Nazi’s rise to power, Hirschfeld was considered a leading researcher of sex, sexuality and gender. He wrote and lectured on these topics and also treated and advised patients, according to the United State Holocaust Museum.
Hirschfeld was an early name in Eugenics, the practice of selectively breeding people with preferred hereditary traits to achieve a desired effect in future generations.
“He started an organization and the same is Sexual Sciences and Eugenics. What’s Eugenics about? You’re playing God. You’re playing God with people and human beings. Then you fast forward, you have people like JB Pritzker who have spent millions upon millions of dollars, that’s just one person there are others as well, who has been influential in funding education and medical organization,” Bauwens said.
Pritzker is the current governor of Illinois and a member of the wealthy family who owns the Hyatt hotel chain.
What motivates those who push trans agenda?
The keepers of the narrative may be driven for different reasons but share something very important – passion.
“You have spiritual and ideological motivations. You have money, you have people who themselves are probably abused and finding their identity in ideology. We have to keep that in mind. What happened to somebody who could deny the existence of their biological reality? What’s going on in the heart of that person? We have to pray for them as well even as we push forward and disallow them to have influence over our children.
“Looking back at the root system gives us a clue as to what the purpose is in (their efforts at) transing our kids.”
