Stephen Whittle

Professor Stephen Whittle OBE
Stephen Whittle OBE (left) with fellow Press for Change campaigner Christine Burns MBE at Buckingham Palace
Born	(1955-05-29) 29 May 1955 (age 61) Altrincham, Cheshire
Known for	Equal rights for transgender people campaigning
Title	Professor of Law
Partner(s)	Sarah Rutherford
Children	4

Stephen Thomas Whittle, OBE (born 29 May 1955) is a United Kingdom activist with the transgender activist group Press for Change. Since 2007, he has been professor of Equalities Law in the School of Law at Manchester Metropolitan University. Between 2007 and 2009, he was president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). A British FTM transsexual, he is described as "a radical lesbian before his sex change and now a leading commentator on gender issues", who after the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into force in April 2005, achieved legal recognition as man and so was able to marry his female partner.

Whittle was born on 29 May 1955 at Altrincham Cottage Hospital, Greater Manchester, where his grandmother was a senior nurse. He was assigned female at birth. He was a sickly child, suffering from rickets. He was the middle child of the five children in his family. In 1955 the family lived in Wythenshawe. At that time, Wythenshawe was said to be the biggest council estate in Europe, providing workers for the Trafford Park estate. After several years of sun lamp treatment for his rickets, at St Mary's Hospital, he was considered well enough to attend Havely Hay Primary school at the age of five. In 1963, the family moved to Withington village, an inner suburb of Manchester. From the age of eight he attended Old Moat Junior school.

In 1966 his mother, Barbara Elizabeth Whittle (née Stead), being concerned at how different he was from his sisters, entered him in the examination for Withington Girls' School. Being one of the highest scorers in the city in the Eleven plus exam that year, he received a scholarship to attend. It was during his time at Withington Girls' School that he started reading medical books. He knew he was romantically attached to other girls at school – he never told them, and so his love was not reciprocated – but he also knew that he was sexually attracted to men. On top of that was a strong desire to be a man, to grow a beard and to have a hairy chest. He had read articles about people like Della Aleksander and April Ashley who had had a sex change. In 1972, at the age of 16, whilst visiting his doctor about a sore throat he read about a female to male transman (FTM) transsexual person.