In the three hours following the prime minister’s “gender whisperers” tweet on Wednesday morning, I was yelled at twice in the street by men sitting in their cars at traffic lights. That was just during a five-minute walk from the tram to the gym. While I’m old enough to recite activist Marsha P Johnson’s mantra, “pay it no mind”, what concerns me is just how many transgender, non-binary or gender-questioning kids at school this week will endure the same harassment in the wake of Scott Morrison’s latest comments about LGBTIQA+ Australians.

There’s often a spike in harassment towards the transgender community at the times when our leaders and media pundits single us out with hate speech. It gives permission for people to think their prejudiced ideas are justifiable beliefs that need to be shouted from cars or in playgrounds. It’s the Australian way – passed down through the generations – with transphobia a staple in the diet of the bully.

We do not need ‘gender whisperers’ in our schools. Let kids be kids. https://t.co/POzM26PXU5 — Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) September 4, 2018

Morrison’s Wednesday morning tweet is yet another fail in a public conversation on the rights and lived experiences of transgender and non-binary people. Paired with the Daily Telegraph’s manipulative article around the increase in rates of children identifying as gender diverse in Australian schools, it contributes to a discussion overwhelmingly dominated by a conservative cisgender platform. It’s a concerted political agenda that actively seeks to shame the communities that help transgender kids move beyond dysphoria.

Programs like those developed by Sydney counsellor Dr Elizabeth Riley – whose work has been misrepresented by the Daily Telegraph – are clearly helping an emerging generation of transgender kids “be kids” beyond gender-binary stereotypes.

As a transgender woman of Generation X who came out late in life, who lived in secrecy, silence and shame for nearly four decades, I hold this awakening in gender diversity dear to me. It’s also the generation before me that helped in understanding my gender identity and gave me the courage and community support to become who I am. As London-based writer Ayishat Akanbi tweeted in 2017: “Millennials aren't creating new gender identities they're only giving language to ones that have always existed under the burden of shame.”

I know that I am one of a handful of transgender people who graduated from my high school, then a boy’s school on the Mornington Peninsula. We connected through social media and because individually we have been able to access the language and community to recognise what we knew all along: that we were transgender. It was something we shouldn't have needed to hide or be ashamed of, but the legacy of our individual experiences at school lives with us. What I’d give to have been in a school that just let me be one of the kids, the girl I knew myself to be, but that’s not important to somebody like Morrison.

If Morrison genuinely loved all Australians (as he claimed to do in the same breath as telling us gay conversion therapy is irrelevant), he’d take more responsibility for his comments during two radio interviews on Monday, as well as his tweet on Wednesday, that clearly place some of our most vulnerable people at risk – trans kids. His refusal to outlaw conversion therapy, or to see it as an issue is an insult to generations of LGBTIQA+ Australians. As someone who had it thrust upon me by a clinical psychologist after leaving boys' school, coming out as trans in the mid-90s, I find this attitude dismisses my experience of misdiagnosis, mistreatment through hypnotherapy and its history of trauma I live with every day and it is deeply hurtful.

“Gender whisperers”? Really, prime minister? Casting teachers who have the welfare of gender-questioning children at heart as some subversive secret cult is an insult to the empathy and vision they provide. Young queer and trans people, who are in desperate need for belonging, safety and acceptance in their classrooms, must be protected by the education system.

The language used in the Telegraph – that “teachers are now being taught to spot potential transgender students in the classroom” – is deeply rooted in the gaze, suspicion, secrecy, curiosity, surveillance, policing and profiling. That is the burden of being transgender, not transness itself. It’s this surveilling behaviour by cisgender people that we endure that is debilitating. It feeds the idea that we are doing something wrong. No, trans people are not doing anything wrong and I reject the idea that we would all rather we are not. I wouldn't be cisgender for quids and could deal with the pressures of being trans better if cis folks stayed out of my business.

The effect of transphobia, especially when displayed by politicians and the media, is to push gender assimilation on kids who are among the most vulnerable to self-harm and suicide – and it is plainly abusive. Trans people have a right to optimism and better life chances. As Dr Elizabeth Riley herself states: “Some boys have vaginas and some girls have penises.” Get over it, just let it happen. It’s no big deal.

In the months leading up to an election, I lament the prospect of enduring more state-sanctioned homophobic and transphobic extremism and worry about what it will do to our community. One thing is for sure: many of us saw this coming well beyond last November’s marriage equality distraction and we are ready to get around each other for support.

In his first 14 days in office, Scott Morrison has put the lives of the the LGBTIQA+ community in the firing line three times. Gender is not a fad, nor is it even a zeitgeist and, despite Morrison’s evangelical leanings, it’s not for him to deny us our place as citizens, as students, as kids. No matter what percentage of the population anyone thinks we occupy, this is the first generation of trans and non-binary Australians who could have the opportunity to walk down the street without being yelled at, whispered about in class, or worse. Perhaps those who rallied for the marriage equality yes campaign might want to wake up off the couch and get around us? We deserve respect and dignity – and together we will not be denied that.