It was bad enough to have the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia called "Idaho". But leaving aside concerns as to why the organisers of the event would want it to sound like a D-day landing beach, the idea that the "T" should be silent is hugely symbolic. A much better acronym would have been Idath, but that would have meant putting transphobia in front of homophobia. The organisers must have decided that trans people were not important enough.

Following this trend, the tragedy of the Malawian couple sentenced to 14 years imprisonment with hard labour simply for loving each other, is now framed as a "gay rights" issue. However, the appalling case of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga has demonstrated just how silent the T has been rendered - and indeed the possibility that there might also be an I (for intersex) not even considered.

There has rightly been an international outcry in response to the couple's barbaric treatment, but the protest has been against the perceived homophobia of Malawi's law courts. The problem is, however, that one half of this couple does not primarily identify as gay. Tiwonge is most probably transgender but possibly intersex (in many parts of Africa people do not actually have clear vocabulary to express this), and considers herself a woman. Indeed she has lived "as a woman" all her life.

This situation brings to mind Milton Diamond's important insight: "Nature loves diversity, society hates it." As a society we have started to learn that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, but too many people still have problems with transgender people including, unbelievably, some gay people. A gay male film director has recently made a transphobic film in the US, much to the dismay of the American trans community.

Being gay, lesbian or bisexual is in the west increasingly considered an acceptable and natural part of human diversity, in a way that being trans is not. The international outcry has been against the conviction of two gay men, and I suspect the international community would be less motivated to intervene in the case of a transgender woman.

Paradoxically, the apparent media consensus that these two people are gay may help secure their release if international pressure can be maintained. But I, for one, will not be forgetting how this story's transgender angle appears to have been systematically suppressed – some might even say censored. This probably stems from the fact society still does not consider trans people to be human beings.

It has been calculated that a transgender woman is murdered somewhere in the world every 53 hours. Given the relative size of the population of transgender women who are "out", and the fact that not all murders of trans women are known or reported, that is equivalent to at least 1.3 million cisgender women being murdered every year. I suspect that if women were being slaughtered on that scale just for their gender it would be huge news, but when it is trans women (and sometimes trans men) being murdered, it is different.

In 1980, a misguided and ignorant woman called Janice Raymond called for trans people to be "mandated out of existence". Despite the best efforts of murderers and transphobic journalists at erasing us, we are still here 30 years later. Our numbers are growing rapidly and, what's more, we are no longer willing to be silenced, misrepresented or ignored. Please support Chimbalanga and Monjeza and ask the UK government to apply pressure on Malawi to end this farce while they are both still on this planet.

• This article was commissioned after the author contacted us via the You tell us page. She posts on Cif as Natacha