In 1974 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. He began
hormone replacement therapy in 1975. 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
trans woman 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. 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 20s, he had had suspicions and was neither surprised nor 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 the 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
Commission for Equalities and Human Rights. ==Honours==