» READ MORE: Mazzoni Center’s new leader has come home to Philadelphia to listen and help heal The 2021 virtual event drew more than 3,500 attendees and included 135 sessions, according to organizers. Before the pandemic, the in-person event drew up to 8,000 people, some coming from out of state. 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.
“I started getting harassment via phone, text, and email,” she said, calling the experience “unsettling.” 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. By last weekend, however, she was receiving messages that veered from calling her a pedophile to anti-Semitic remarks. Simon, who is Jewish, said she spoke about sources for sex education for youth. 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. In the article, he wrote that Philadelphia’s school district encouraged teachers to attend a conference on “kink,” “trans sex,” and “banging beyond binaries.”īoth the school district and conference organizers at the Mazzoni Center, Philadelphia’s largest LGBTQ health agency, say these descriptions are misrepresentations. 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.
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.Ĭonservative news outlets, including the FOX News show Tucker Carlson Tonight, were bringing new attention to last summer’s event. A barrage of text messages and emails brimming with hateful comments stunned Philadelphia therapist Rachel Simon over the weekend.