Right-wing trolls harassed this Bellingham sex educator. Then she reached across the divide

Right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination has become a flashpoint in recent weeks for discourse about political violence, freedom of speech, and the dangers of rushing to conclusions without complete information.

But for her part, Bellingham resident and school board director Jenn Mason was deeply pondering those things long before Kirk’s death. In 2022, she was targeted by right-wing media outlets that mischaracterized her work as a sex educator, bringing an onslaught of violence and threats to her doorstep.

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Mason, who owns WinkWink sex shop in Bellingham, teaches a class for adults called “Sex After Bad Stuff.” She calls it “a pleasure education course for anyone who’s experienced sexual assault or trauma.” Mason, who previously worked as an advocate for domestic violence victims, created the class because she saw a need to support people who were often years down the road from harmful experiences.

Separately, she also teaches age-appropriate sex ed classes for children — with their parents’ permission — through her shop’s “Uncringe Academy.”

“We teach pretty standard sex ed stuff — a lot about anatomy, puberty, consent, healthy relationships…it's pretty straightforward,” Mason said. “We also sometimes hold events for youth. So we were doing a queer youth open mic night as part of Whatcom Youth Pride.”

But three years ago, Mason suddenly found herself in the eye of a political storm after landing on the radar of conservative media outlets. They conflated her sexual wellness teachings and product offerings for adults with her youth sex education curriculum, and accused her of being “a pedophile and groomer.”

“The right-wing media portrayal was completely inaccurate and false,” Mason said. “It entirely misrepresented the work that I do, which is very normal sex education and queer youth advocacy. So it was fabricated and misrepresented to a stunning degree.”

Then came the hate mail. Mason received thousands of messages per day at the height of the harassment, she said.

“I had people texting me on my personal phone to say, 'I know [where you live]. I can see you watching TV right now.'”

Mason was also on the receiving end of antisemitic rhetoric and hateful comments about her daughter.

“[I received] emails that told me I should die in a gas chamber because I'm Jewish, or that the Holocaust made sense because of people like me,” she said. “My daughter is disabled, and I had a number of emails and messages that were telling me that my daughter's disabled because I'm a terrible person, or that I've gotten what I deserved.”

Protesters soon began showing up outside of WinkWink, some open-carrying firearms.

“For a good month, I would leave the store with my hood on and circle the block a few times before I went home.” Mason said. “It was really scary.”

Mason even began carrying a knife, gifted to her by her father-in-law for personal protection.

The harassment came to a head when vandals shattered WinkWink’s windows. They left Mason with $30,000 worth of losses, including repairs, damaged merchandise, and lost wages due to the shop’s temporary closure.

“People really believed that I was doing bad things to children, and I also think that there were people who felt like I was a representation of everything that they see wrong with the world right now,” Mason said. “And so I think people were responding to both their anger and from the pain that they have experienced in their own life.”

Amid the backlash, Mason caught the attention of Charlie Kirk, who condemned Mason in a post on the website of Turning Point USA, an organization that advocates for conservative policies on high school and college campuses across the country.

When she heard about his death earlier this month, Mason was stricken, she said.

“Charlie Kirk’s death is sad and frightening to me on a variety of levels,” she said. “People used to tell me not to worry too much about threats because the folks sending them are just ‘keyboard warriors’ — they wouldn’t actually show up to face me. But I went to bed every night knowing that all it takes is one person with a gun to make that horribly untrue.”

At the time of the harassment in 2022, Mason said it was difficult to process her emotions about what was happening.

“When you're a business owner, you have to be the adult in the room all the time, so at first it felt like I didn't really have space for my own feelings,” she said. “I just had to handle… helping my staff get through it. I had to handle messaging, communications, the school district — there was just so much to handle.”

But one thing Mason found comfort in during that time was messages from people who were neither fully against her, nor fully supportive of her work, she said.

“Periodically, I would have somebody who would message me to say things like, ‘I don't agree with you, but I'm so sorry for what's happening. And it was like [a] light.”

Those expressions of empathy helped Mason through that difficult time, she said, and inspired her to invite discourse with people she doesn’t agree with politically.

“As I've moved forward, I have periodically reached out to people who are going through an internet crisis or being attacked by an internet mob, whether I agree with them or not, to express my empathy,” Mason said.

“I would have thought that I would have felt even more hardened, even more defiant, and even more angry as time went on,” she continued. “What's actually happened is that I've softened in a lot of ways. I think what I went through was so horrible, it really made me feel like I never want to see people go through that.”

The harassment also strengthened her resolve to continue teaching sex education.

“It really underlined my mission and made me feel like this is necessary for people to have more exposure and information to accurate, comprehensive sex ed,” she said.

One of Mason’s biggest takeaways from her experience: We often have more in common with others than we realize.

“I think most of us have a really similar vision for what a good community and a good world look like, [but] we have really different ways of getting there,” she said.