Christine Burns

Christine Burns
Christine Burns in 2010
Born	February 1954 (age 64) United Kingdom
Residence	Manchester, England, UK
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Manchester
Occupation	Businesswoman, equality campaigner
Years active	since 1992
Title	Managing Director of Plain Sense Ltd. (2002–Present)
Website	Just Plain Sense [11]

Christine Burns, MBE (born February 1954) is a British political activist best known for her work with Press for Change and, more recently, as an internationally recognised health advisor. Burns was awarded an MBE in 2005 in recognition of her work representing transgender people. In 2011, she ranked 35th on the Independent on Sunday's annual Pink List of influential lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United Kingdom.

Burns was born in the London Borough of Redbridge and attended the University of Manchester, earning first-class honours in computer science in 1975 and a master's degree in 1977. During her time as a city IT consultant and a Tory activist, she chose not reveal her trans history to colleagues. In 1995, Burns came out to local Tory leadership in order to campaign more openly. The British tabloids, however, chose to ignore her as she was "too ordinary". Remembering this era, she jokes about her changing perception of herself as a trans activist: "I realised something had changed in 1997, when I realised it was more embarrassing to admit to being a conservative than to being a trans woman."

In 1992, Press for Change (PFC) was formed, and went on to become a key lobbying and legal support organisation for trans people in the UK.

During 1992, Burns ran an IT consultancy business, "Cheshire Computer Consultants", and was Secretary of her local Conservative Party branch. Burns joined Press for Change in 1993, but only made her transsexual background public in 1995. She was able to maintain her initial privacy as early PFC campaigns were paper based and, as such, fairly low key. She would go on to become a leading figure in obtaining legal recognition for trans people.

Over the Christmas of 1995, she created the PFC web site as sub-pages within her own home page on Compuserve - one of the first serious campaign and information sites for minorities on the web. As editor of the site, she devised the now defunct PFC tagline "Seeking no more but no less than what YOU take for granted". In mid-1997, Burns and PFC's new webmistress, Claire McNab, registered the domain www.pfc.org.uk and moved the existing pages onto a commercial server.