Stephen Whittle

Early life

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.

Transgender rights campaigning

In 1974 Whittle came out as a FTM transman, after returning from a women's Liberation Conference in Edinburgh, which he attended as a member of the Manchester Lesbian Collective. He began hormone replacement therapy in 1975. He has been active in transsexual and transgender communities since the age of twenty when in 1975 he joined the Manchester TV/TS group which had been started in 1972/3 by two trans women the very first support group for transsexual people in the United Kingdom. In 1979 he joined a former army officer and then royal sculptor, Judy Couzins, a transwoman in the Self Help Association for Transsexuals (SHAFT).

In 1989, he founded the UK's FTM Network which he coordinated until November 2007. In 1992, along with Mark Rees, the actress Myka Scott and an airline pilot Krystyna Sheffield, he founded and became vice-president of Press for Change that works to change the laws and social attitudes surrounding transgender and transsexual lives. Whittle remains as one of the vice-presidents (there is no president, as it is a consensus group), and Press for Change was called "one of the most successful lobby groups seen in the last 25 years" by Lord Alex Carlile, Baron Carlile of Berriew as early as 1994 at the reading of his Gender Reassignment Bill. The bill failed but "for 40 minutes members of parliament discussed trans people which without it, would have never happened." Whittle underwent phalloplasty surgeries from 2001 to 2003. The Channel 4 documentary Make me a Man followed his life during the surgeries.

Though unable to marry legally in the United Kingdom until the passing of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. He and his partner (now wife), Sarah Rutherford, have four children by artificial insemination. Whittle wrote in Disembodied Law: Trans People's Legal(Outer) Space, "I face an inadequate legal framework in which to exist. We are simply ‘not’ within a world that only permits two sexes, only allows two forms of gender role, gender identity or expression. Always falling outside of the ‘norm’ our lives become less, our humanity is questioned, and our oppression is legitimized." The Whittles' efforts to gain recognition of Stephen as their children's legal father led to X, Y and Z v. The United Kingdom before the European Court of Human Rights in 1996. When the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into force in April 2005, Whittle obtained a new, male birth certificate. He then married Sarah (née Rutherford) later that year. They had been cohabiting since 1979. They have four children by artificial insemination, the first of whom was born on 13 October 1992. In April 2006, they jointly adopted the children, making Whittle their legal father.

He has written and spoken extensively on his personal journey, most notably in his autobiographical statement in Will Self's essay for David Gamble's photography collection 'Perfidious Man.' His writings have included, among other things, an article on the ground-breaking transsexual employment discrimination case decided on by the European Court of Justice. In 2005 he was awarded The Sylvia Rivera Award for Transgender Studies by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies for the monograph ‘Respect and Equality.’ In 2007, along with his co-editor, Susan Stryker, he was awarded a Lambda Literary Award for their annotated collection of 50 key historical and contemporary transgender science, political and theory texts; 'The Transgender Studies Reader'.

In 2002, Whittle was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Having experienced a variety of health problems since his early 20's, he had had suspicions and was neither surprised, or terrified by the diagnosis. His multiple sclerosis has been an increasing problem since late 2005, yet he continues in his full-time university post, and his fight for the human rights of trans people throughout he world. In recent years, he has collaborated with other members; Paisley Currah, Shannon Minter and Alyson Meiselmann, of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health WPATH on amicus briefs to courts in many jurisdictions. In 2007, he was the first non-medical professional and first trans person to become President of WPATH. Whittle continues to write extensively on the law and policy surrounding transsexual and transgender people, along with several recent academic articles returning to the question of the law and trans people. He also continues to work on what he hopes will be the defining history of transgender, and the sources of the many theories surrounding gender variant people. Throughout his life he has maintained an interest in the avant-garde of the arts, and has started to collaborate with Sara Davidmann, a photographer and Lecturer in Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art.

In early 2007, the research report Engendered Penalties: Transsexual and Transgender People’s Experience of Inequality and Discrimination, was instrumental in ensuring the inclusion of trans people in the remit of the new instrumental in ensuring the inclusion of trans people in the remit of the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights.

Honours

In 2002, Whittle was given the Human Rights Award by the Civil Rights group Liberty, for his commitment and dedication to ensuring the advancement of rights for transsexual people through judicial means in the UK, Europe, and around the world.

In the 2005 New Year Honours, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to Gender Issues".

In 2006, he was awarded the Virginia Prince Lifetime Achievement Award by the USA's International Federation for Gender Education.

In March 2015, Whittle was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS).

Roles

Books

Chapters in books

Journal articles