In mystery books, many of us consider backstories of perpetrators and the victims of crimes the meat of the book. Apropos of exactly that, lately I’ve written about the rise of hate speech against many vulnerable groups because this is the backstory to hate crimes. Doctors like me always tout preventive medicine and, as a person, it’s my core belief that crime prevention is better than crime investigations.
This month brought to light the terrible consequence of a fetid backstory that’s been gaining ground. I’ll reference events in Canada because that’s what I know best, but this has been a problem in the United States and other countries around the world. So, although the backstory is Canadian, the crime occurred in America.
Backstory:
In June, 2023, a professor and two students were stabbed at a gender studies lecture at the University of Waterloo and the police cited the motivation as “hate related to gender expression and gender identity.”
By August, 2023, many universities removed class locations and instructor names from the public domain to protect those teaching gender studies. The president of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, which represents 17,000 university faculty and academic librarians, said “racist, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ and other hate-motivated online extremism is being seen on university campuses and classes that explore social and gender issues.”
Despite the proof that anti-LGBTQ hate speech results in violence, in September we saw Marches against LGBTQ Canadians. I wrote about this in On our Streets and referenced these marches with the Orwellian name “Leave our kids alone” that actually targeted LGBTQ children. These marchers claimed that children were too young to hear about our LGBTQ community but what they really didn’t want is teaching our children the facts: some people are gay, trans or binary and that’s OK because Canadian laws protect them. One video of these marches showed a child claiming that LGBTQ Canadians are“disgusting” so, apparently, they weren’t too young to hear about the LGBTQ community, talk about them or insult them. They were just too young to hear that being LGBTQ is OK.
Crime:
In February, 2024, Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old Oklahoma high school sophomore, who identified as transgender and non-binary, had her head smashed repeatedly against the bathroom floor by fellow students and she died from her injuries.
Many people I’ve spoken with justify their silence on attacks against LGBTQ by saying they don’t really understand the issue. Surely, killing a child by bashing their head against a bathroom floor because they claim to be transgender and non-binary requires no complex understanding of sexual development to know this is wrong and a grotesque crime.
Our collective backstory:
Hate speech is a crime in Canada. Less so in the United States. Regardless of the legal status, hate speech is the backstory to an increasing number of vicious attacks against innocent people. Another crucial backstory is silence.
When I post on social media about many types of hate speech, more recently about antisemitic hate speech, I get some very ugly pushback. This is why many people are increasingly silent on hate speech related issues. It’s difficult to speak up.
Martin Luther King’s haunting line applies to this silence: “The ultimate tragedy, is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
So, if we are writing a fulsome backstory of bigoted physical attacks on people whether they be Asian, Jewish, LGBTQ or any other group - the silence of the many would be part of that.
How do we speak up?
Here on SleuthSayers, I’ve been so fortunate that Leigh Lundin and Robert Lopresti have been kind enough to allow me to indulge my penchant for writing crime backstories. On social media, I have followers who are incredibly decent and decry hate speech and hate crimes – and this makes it easier to handle the rude pushback.
Ultimately, it is the fact – and it is a fact – that we write the backstories for others daily and this should make us eschew silence. These are dangerous days for the rise of hate. In my decades of living, I’ve never felt so worried as I am now. If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention.
This rise of hate against so many groups worldwide isn't just organic. Many reports from intelligence agencies show it's funded by foreign countries to sow dissent within our democracies, as well as by Neo-nazi movements, funded by ardent believers, some of whom have a great deal of money. It often feels like those of us speaking out are playing checkers with chess players who have moves, money and motives that we don't understand. It's all so infuriating. And depressing. I hope that writing backstories will help people connect the dots and maybe that will matter.
UPDATE: Do new autopsy results clarify what happened to Nex? I give you the summary by a child paediatrician - because, of course, there are many who do not want this to be murder, but Dr. O'Brien clarifies the cause.
