International Transgender Day of Visibility: Sheffield teen opens up about life as a trans boy

International Transgender Day of Visibility falls on March 31 each year to celebrate trans and non-binary people, and to raise awareness of discrimination faced by trans people around the world.

The term ‘transgender’ has become a word which has divided society. It is associated with arguments over gender, pronouns, toilets and changing rooms, sports, and human rights. But for many of the 250,000 transgender Brits today, the word simply describes who they are.

The Star has spoken to Kallvin Tinsley, a trans boy who lives in Waverley, to try to understand what life is like for him. Aged just 17, he is asking others for respect and kindness.

“It’s who I am and I wouldn’t change anything about it, but it’s a really hard thing to deal with and go through,” he said. “We’re not a big scary group of people that are coming to take over. We’re humans, we’re just trying to live our lives.”

From as young as age three, Kallvin, who studies at Rotherham College, has felt he was born in the wrong body. The art and design student has begun transitioning after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which describes a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.

Despite his young age, Kallvin has been a victim of hate crimes, discrimination and bullying prompted. Such toxicity left him battling with severe mental ill health, which two years ago saw him placed in a mental health hospital for six months after trying to take his own life.

‘I was trying to kill myself’

Kallvin said: “I was trying to kill myself because of everything that people had said, and the trauma I’d gone through. But a lot of my mental health was blamed on the fact that I was trans, even though that wasn't the only thing that was happening in my life that could have caused it.”

“My earliest memory of being bullied was probably when I was in year eight, I was about 12 or 13, and I had my shirt pulled up in the boys toilets, because they didn't believe that I was a boy,” Kallvin said.

“I didn't really understand it then, but it was like a reality check that I'm going to have to deal with people doing this throughout my life.

“I've been called tranny a lot, which is a really derogatory term, and then there's the severe end of what I've gone through where I've been pulled by the back of the neck and screamed in my face that I'm a girl.”

“I'm still a child, and the fact that I have to deal with grown men and women physically and verbally assaulting me because of who I am is absolutely terrifying. I don't need another person to tell me who I am and what I should feel and why it's wrong, because I'm just the same as them,” Kallvin added.

Kallvin believes since he came out to his family and friends as transgender at age 11, it has become progressively worse to be trans in society. Kallvin made particular note of the recent murder of his friend, 17-year-old Brianna Ghey, a trans girl from Warrington, whose death is believed to be a hate crime.

“It took me about a week or so to fully process it. I knew her and we were planning to actually meet in person and go to Sheffield Pride together. Then the next morning I woke up and she had died,” Kallvin revealed.

“It was a very big shock to me, and the rest of the trans community. What if the next time it's me, or someone else close to me.”

‘It’s going to get better’

For Kallvin, he says knowing that he will start taking testosterone in the next few months is the thing that’s keeping him going each day. He said: “It feels unreal. Even as early as a year ago, it felt like I was never going to get to this point of my transition.

“It's going to be life changing because it's that next step to being who I present myself as, and it's going to present to other people that I am male. It's going to make it a lot easier for me to be alive.”

Kallvin added: “For any trans people reading this, keep your head up because it’s going to get better. Even though it seems like it’s never going to turn out how you want it to, it will in the end, and there’s such a big community here to support you. No matter what people say, you’re still who you say you are.”