A 13-year-old trans boy has challenged Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on national TV about his recent “gender whisperers” tweet. On Wednesday, Morrison responded to a report saying teachers were being taught how to help potentially transgender students by tweeting that schools don’t need “gender whisperers” and we should “let kids be kids”.
“Let kids be kids? That’s exactly what we are doing… and a lot of that is letting children be themselves,” counsellor Dr Elizabeth Riley said about Morrison’s remarks.
Morrison went on to appear on a TV show on Thursday where the panel played a video of “one young viewer”. You can see the exchange at the 4 minute mark in the video below:
We speak to PM @ScottMorrisonMP about his views on the au pair case, whether bullying occurred during the leadership spill and a young trans kid shares her story with the PM. #auspol #TheProjectTV pic.twitter.com/caN3VQiN8z
— The Project (@theprojecttv) September 6, 2018
“My name is Evie Macdonald, I’m 13 years old and I’m a transgender kid. And this is what I want to say to the prime minister,” Evie said. “There are thousands of kids in Australia that are gender diverse. We don’t deserve to be disrespected like that through tweets from our prime minister.”
Evie said she knew “what it’s like to be on the receiving end of attitudes like this”. “I went to a Christian school where I had to pretend to be a boy and spent weeks in conversion therapy. We get one childhood and mine was stolen from me by attitudes like this.”
Morrison said before that he has no issue with kids going through the torture of “gay conversion” camps.