Conservative media got ahold of videos from a 2021 Philly trans conference. Harassment followed.

A barrage of text messages and emails brimming with hateful comments stunned Philadelphia therapist Rachel Simon over the weekend. Without her knowledge, an edited video of her sex education for teens presentation at a local transgender wellness conference nearly a year ago had been shared on Twitter, garnering about 400,000 views.

Conservative news outlets, including the FOX News show Tucker Carlson Tonight, were bringing new attention to last summer’s event. The controversy began with a story by the conservative activist Christopher Rufo, writing about LGBTQ issues in schools for the City Journal, an online magazine. In the article, he wrote that Philadelphia’s school district encouraged teachers to attend a conference on “kink,” “trans sex,” and “banging beyond binaries.”

Both the school district and conference organizers at the Mazzoni Center, Philadelphia’s largest LGBTQ health agency, say these descriptions are misrepresentations. While the conference did feature presentations on sexually explicit issues, organizers say those were not the focus, nor the reason that district officials shared information about the event with staff.

Simon, who is Jewish, said she spoke about sources for sex education for youth. By last weekend, however, she was receiving messages that veered from calling her a pedophile to anti-Semitic remarks. Other conference speakers and staff at the Mazzoni Center similarly received vitriolic communications in the aftermath of last week’s conservative media attention that culminated in a segment on one of the nation’s most popular cable news shows.

“I started getting harassment via phone, text, and email,” she said, calling the experience “unsettling.”

The Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference started 20 years ago, though it has changed its name a few times, and is billed as the largest conference in the world that focuses on the health issues of transgender people. Before the pandemic, the in-person event drew up to 8,000 people, some coming from out of state. The 2021 virtual event drew more than 3,500 attendees and included 135 sessions, according to organizers.

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Its focus includes addressing how trans and non-gender-confirming youth and young adults are at heightened risk for poor mental health outcomes. According to the 2022 national survey of the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention nonprofit focusing on LGBTQ youth, nearly one in five transgender and nonbinary people ages 13 to 24 has attempted suicide. Rates were lower when schools, homes, and communities are supportive and accepting.

The controversy on Tuesday extended to the Pennsylvania statehouse. Republican Reps. Martina White of Philadelphia and Curt Sonney from Erie sent a letter to Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. and incoming Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. on the issue demanding responses for a list of questions. They echo objections raised by some on social media who called the conference speakers “groomers” — a politically charged reference to targeting or “grooming” children for sexual abuse.

“The conference, presented by the Mazzoni Center, covered highly sexually explicit material that is inappropriate for our classrooms,” they wrote. “There are legitimate concerns about how this type of ‘education’ can be equated to grooming.”

In a cable news segment about the conference that was broadcast last Thursday, Carlson shared edited clips from a workshop in which trans sex educator Jamie Joy discusses ways to describe genitalia without reference to gender. Carlson also shared another clip from a session about prosthetic genitalia, which the FOX News host claimed was “directed to minors.”

Joy, who led a discussion on gender-neutral ways to describe genitalia in a session intended for adults, says that when they saw themselves on FOX News they cried.

After showing the clip, Carlson said: “These people are mentally ill, obviously.”

“It’s very intense to hear someone talk about your work with such disgust,” Joy said, adding that sex workshops for straight adults are common but don’t receive this treatment. “They’re actually targeting this content because I’m trans and not because I’m talking about sex.”

Sultan Shakir, president and executive officer of Mazzoni, disputed Carlson’s claims that a discussion about prosthetic genitalia was “directed to minors.” During the clip that aired on FOX, the speaker says that one type of prosthetic might be a good fit “if you’re a kid.” Despite the reference, Shakir said the sessions highlighted by FOX were for adults only. He adds that the conference offers many workshops about multiple issues that have nothing to do with sexual education.

The school district rejected the notion that it actively encouraged teachers to attend. A spokesperson said the free conference was mentioned in a newsletter last July — as many events in the community are mentioned. Some of the sessions highlighted by the district were “Talk Saves Lives: An Introduction to Suicide Prevention” and “For Every Body: Helping Parents and Families Explore Trans Inclusive Puberty Education.”

Philadelphia schools have instituted multiple policies over the years to support trans students, including allowing students to select a nonbinary gender option in official records, guaranteeing a gender-neutral bathroom in every school, and permitting students to use their preferred names and pronouns and play for the sports team corresponding to their gender identity. Mazzoni also conducts inclusive sex-education programs in schools.

Rufo, the conservative activist whose article sparked the controversy, told The Inquirer that the school district “absolutely encouraged employees to attend the event” and is now ”running away from the documented record.”

“The School District of Philadelphia can barely teach children how to read; it should stop pushing bizarre sexual theories on its students and staff,” he said in a statement.

In his appearance last week on Carlson’s show, Rufo also highlighted the $5 million that Mazzoni received last year in government contracts, concluding that “taxpayers across the state of Pennsylvania likely are subsidizing this kind of content.”

Shakir, Mazzoni’s president, said the money that the center receives from the government is not for events like the conference but for health care.

“The government contracts are 100% about ensuring that individuals in our community have access to quality health care and can live healthy and complete lives and it looks like everything from access to primary care to access to behavioral health care to access to STI testing,” Shakir said.

Following the airing of the segment on Fox, Mazzoni staff and conference speakers, such as Simon, began to receive incendiary messages — at times to their personal phones.

“We clearly need to look at safety in a new way,” Simon said, adding that the need for both mental health care and inclusive education for LGBTQ people continues to be great, so she is not deterred from continuing her work.

For Joy, who started attending the conference in their early 20s, the attention only underscores the need for accepting spaces like the conference.

“From the first moment I walked through the doors, I felt like I was in an oasis. I had never experienced being in a public space where I felt so deeply surrounded by other people who could actually see me for who I was,” Joy recalls. They say that they will continue to live unapologetically as who they are. “What I want to share is the hope for other people.”