We are pleased to announce that Stephen Whittle has joined TransLucent today.
Stephen Thomas Whittle, OBE, FAcSS, DLaws hc, PhD, MA, LLM, BA
A co-founder of Press For Change (PFC www.pfc.org.uk) the UK’s transgender lobby group, Stephen was the organisation’s Head of Legal Services for over 25 years, running and training a team of volunteers providing free legal advice to transgender people and those who work with them. Until 2016, Stephen was a key figure in setting up and organising the management of all of the UK’s national trans support organisations. In 1979 Stephen founded the FTM Network for trans men which he co-ordinated until 2010. In 2005 he was a founder member and
later Chair of Transgender Europe.
Stephen has been researching and writing about the law and transgender people for over 30 years, including being a co-author of the Yogyakarta Principles on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Human Rights. In 2007 Stephen was the first non-doctor and the first Trans person to be elected President of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATHWPATH World Professional Association for Transgender Health https://www.wpath.org). One of his proudest moments (other than marrying his wife in 2005) was in 2009, when the WPATH membership voted, unanimously, for Human Rights to be at the heart of the WPATH International Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People v.7.
As well as teaching and research, Stephen acts an expert witness in Court, on matters relating to Trans lives, LGBT families, privacy rights, and asylum. He was a member of the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, Oversight Case Review Committee from 2016-2023. In 2015, he was appointed as a Special Advisor to the House of Common’s Women & Equalities Committee Inquiry into Transgender Equality.
Stephen regularly writes country reports for the UK’s Immigration courts addressing LGBT concerns, fear of persecution, and the mental health of asylum seekers. From 2014-2018 Stephen served on NHS England’s Gender Identity Services Clinical Strategic Commissioning Group for the Department of Health. He is now Chair and Non-Executive Director of Indigo, Greater Manchester’s NHS Transgender Health service.
More recently he contributed to research on discrimination towards members of the Dalit community in the UK’s South Asian Diaspora, and led a project evaluating the impact of being Dalit for law students and young lawyers in India.
Stephen has received many awards for his academic and voluntary work, including a Lambda Literary Award as co-editor (with Susan Stryker) of The Transgender Studies Reader. In 2005 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE, 2005) in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list for his work with the British Government on transgender rights, in particular as an advisor on the drafting and implementation of the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
Stephen has lived with his partner Sarah since 1979, and they married in 2005 following the passing of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Sarah and Stephen have raised 4 children (born following donor insemination), whom they are extremely proud of for being truly lovely, kind, thoughtful, resilient individuals Their eldest daughter trained as a classical soprano, but then chose to become a senior Whitehall civil servant who worked in the Department of Health throughout the Pandemic. She is now a senior policy lead in the Ministry of Justice. Their son is a multi-talented musician but retrained and is now working in research and development as an acoustic engineer whilst studying for a PhD. Their youngest, twin daughters, trained as social scientists. Though he advised them all to steer clear of the law, all three girls now work within the criminal justice system and are committed public servants.
