Some children are transgender. You can accept them and love them for who they say they are or make their lives hell – those are the options.

I’ve been telling people I’m a girl, and would be happier if they would treat me like one, since I was four. My parents tried to force me – like many trans people – to be the gender they thought I should be, causing us years of unnecessary misery. You cannot “turn” a child trans any more than you can turn a child gay. Nor can you stop a child from being trans any more than you can force a child who is gay to grow up heterosexual. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t bully someone into being someone else, and why would you even want to? That’s why all professional psychological organisations, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the NHS condemn conversion therapy as dangerous and ineffective.

Growing up I got the message that to be trans was to be a pariah, a freak, a joke, insane, beyond contempt

But what if it’s just a phase, I hear you cry. Well, maybe it is. The only thing to do is let them work it out over time. If you listen to medical experts you will know that puberty blockers are reversible, and gender reassignment surgery is performed only on adults in the UK. So no harm is done by allowing children to express themselves however they feel happiest, in contrast to the very real harm done when parents try to suppress these expressions.

Yet religious extremists are invited on to morning television to argue that trans kids should be “helped” by forcing conversion therapy on them. The presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield did a superb job of holding them to account, but why are we hearing from people with such extreme views in the first place? Nor do I understand how these bigots can claim to care about gender-diverse kids, yet fail to mention how vulnerable they are without proper family and medical support.

Almost half of trans school pupils in the UK have attempted suicide. Not “thought about”. Attempted. One in nine of those pupils has received death threats. Eight out of 10 young trans people have self-harmed. Research by Stonewall reveals what numerous studies in UK and US have documented for years – these children are at risk and need all the support they can get.

Why is no one talking about this?

We need an urgent public debate on what is causing trans kids to feel so desperate, and who and what is causing it – things such as stigma, discrimination and lack of acceptance. Religious bigots and rightwing trolls don’t know what “help” these kids need, but I do. I’ve lived it.

I had to spend thousands of pounds removing facial hair. I funded that by having sex for money

I was bullied violently at school. Like many trans and gay kids, home wasn’t always much better. But being anti-bullying is apparently now part of some evil trans agenda – according to newspapers that don’t appear to employ a single trans journalist and fail to report on suicide stats for trans youth. Every day now there is an attack on us in the tabloid press. The Daily Mail, for instance, marked Anti-Bullying Week by bullying trans people with some good old-fashioned, front-page, manufactured outrage. The fuss? The Church of England says boys should be free to wear tiaras. As the Sun’s former managing editor Stig Abell – hardly a “loony lefty” – points out the “advice is sensible and uncontroversial (barely even newsworthy): children should be allowed freedom to play. Move on.”

Less rigid gender roles in society would have helped me growing up. If masculinity wasn’t so heavily policed, maybe I could have gone to school in, say, a tiara and the sky wouldn’t have fallen in. As it happens, I used to go to school in my sister’s tights. The reaction was so bad you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d killed someone. I was told it was “just a phase”, but if so it’s a bloody long one.

Family support would have helped. I don’t believe my father forced me to present as a boy because he is evil. He thought he was doing what was best for me. My parents loved me but they just didn’t know what to do with a child like me – because, for decades, journalists have failed to inform the public of the facts about trans people and chosen to recycle monstrous and inaccurate stereotypes about us instead.

A supportive school would have helped. I’m not saying I needed drag queens to give lessons on diversity – although that looks incredibly fun – but all schools should have a policy that explicitly protects kids from homophobic and transphobic bullying.

Mine didn’t, of course, because of section 28 of the Local Government Act, which banned the “promotion of homosexuality in schools”. In effect it silenced teachers, who were too afraid to even mention gay people. The Tories introduced it while kids like me were in our cots, following a moral panic about the imagined dangers gay rights posed to children, whipped up by the rightwing press. Sound familiar?

Evidence-based healthcare would have helped. Puberty blockers would have saved me from an unwanted male puberty, which I spent the next decade trying to undo with feminising procedures. I didn’t need testosterone pumping into my body for five years, causing me to grow facial hair, which I then had to spend thousands of pounds removing. And no, that isn’t covered by the NHS. I funded that by having sex for money.

Almost half of trans pupils in UK have attempted suicide, survey finds Read more

I could name 50 more problems that arose from going through this traumatic and entirely avoidable male puberty. Forcing kids like me to go through that is just cruel.

Better media representation would have helped. On those rare but exciting occasions I saw trans people in public life growing up, they were exclusively presented as objects of ridicule, pity or disgust. You might not have been aware that trans people existed as anything other than a joke back then, but I was there and so were many other trans people. We saw the things people wrote and said about us, just as trans kids today will see all the cruel and misleading things irresponsible journalists are saying about them. I got the message loud and clear that to be trans was to be a pariah, a freak, a joke, insane, beyond contempt.

Ultimately what would have helped me most is if people had just listened to me. The only reason I became a journalist was to speak out against the cruel and misleading stereotypes I had to listen to about trans people when I was growing up.

Now it’s your turn. Listen to trans people. Listen to these children. Listen to the overwhelming and growing body of evidence that shows that accepting these kids for who they say they are is the best possible approach. If they grow out of it? Great! No harm done. But that’s for us to decide, not you. Are you listening?

• Paris Lees is a freelance journalist, campaigner and presenter