11 Facts About Stephen Whittle

Stephen Thomas Whittle was born on 29 May 1955 and is a British legal scholar and activist with the transgender activist group Press for Change.

Stephen Whittle was the middle child of the five children in his family.

In 1966 his mother, Barbara Elizabeth Stephen Whittle, being concerned at how different he was from his sisters, entered him in the examination for Withington Girls' School.

In 1974 Stephen Whittle came out as a trans man, after returning from a women's Liberation Conference in Edinburgh, which he attended as a member of the Manchester Lesbian Collective.

Stephen Whittle remains as one of the vice-presidents, 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.

Stephen Whittle then married Sarah later that year.

Stephen Whittle 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.

Stephen 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.

Stephen Whittle 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.

In 2002, Stephen 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 March 2015, Stephen Whittle was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.