WITHINGTON
Girls School, an exclusive public school in
Manchester, would have had high hopes for their
petite deputy head girl, Miss Whittle. She was
an impressive all-rounder: academically bright,
popular with fellow students and, to the chagrin
of her older sisters, attracted the best-looking
boys.
They would certainly not be surprised to
discover that, some 30 years later, the now
48-year-old Whittle would have become Dr
Whittle, a highly-respected lecturer with a
doctorate in law at Manchester Metropolitan
University
But if they went looking for their former
deputy head girl at the law faculty, they would
be profoundly shocked. For in the office marked
Dr Whittle sits a hirsute, stocky man with a
deep voice. He sports a spiky beard, a hairy
chest, a firm handshake, and his name is Dr
Stephen Whittle.
Accompany him to his £600,000 home to
the south of the city and the plot thickens.
There you meet his partner, Sarah Rutherford,
44, and running to the door, yelling "hi dad!",
are four delightful children: Eleanor, 11;
Gabriel, nine, and seven-year-old twins Lizzie
and Pippa.
It boggles the mind to think that Stephen was
once a girl with 34C breasts.
Until this week, the law has not been kind to
people like Stephen. But yesterday, the legal
status of transsexuals took a dramatic leap
forward when a change to the law, included in
the Government's legislative programme announced
in the Queen's Speech, gave the go-ahead for
people who have had sex-change operations to
marry and adopt children for the first time.
For Stephen, a founder member of
Press
for Change, a group of transsexual
activists, the Gender Recognition Bill is the
culmination of a 10-year battle. "Finally my
legal rights and those of the 5,000 other
transsexuals in Britain will be recognised,"
says Stephen.
In my case, it allows me to marry the woman I
love and to legally adopt the children
[conceived with a sperm donor] we have
brought up together.
"And I can finally get myself a new birth
certificate in the name of Stephen Whittle," he
grins, "male."
Stephen Whittle will not divulge to anyone,
not even his children, the first name on his
original birth certificate. Suffice to say that
he was born a girl to Barbara and John Whittle,
a secretary and engineer respectively, and grew
up as the middle child with two older sisters
and two younger brothers in Manchester.
My road-to-Damascus moment came in my final
year of primary school when I was 10," says
Stephen. "It was sports day and we were lining
up for the boys' and girls' races when suddenly
it hit me like a bolt: 'I'm in the wrong race.
I'm always going to be in the wrong race.' I
broke down in floods of tears. A teacher tried
to comfort me but I couldn't tell her I wanted
to be a boy."
Until then, she had seemed a typical tomboy
eschewing the dolls of her sisters for the
cowboy suits, guns and scooters of her brothers.
But life was about to become much more
complicated.
Throughout her teens, she led a tortured,
secret double-life. She began to devour books on
gender identity "I discovered books about men
becoming women through a sex-change, but there
was no mention of people going the other way."
Devastated, she tried to suppress her feelings
and desperately threw herself into being the
best girl she possibly could, growing her hair
long and joining the Girl Guides.
But puberty was horrendous.
First my breasts started to develop. Then,
when I had my first period in church, I thought
it was a punishment from God. To others I was a
teenager with curves in all the right places,
but all I saw in the mirror was a hideously
misshapen person. Most nights, I would cry
myself to sleep."
Twice in her teens, she tried to kill herself
by overdosing on aspirin. "Most people who try
to commit suicide don't want to live," recaps
Stephen. "But, in my case, I loved life and what
it could offer ... if only I could be myself."
Sexually it was a confusing time. At 18, she met
a boy she liked. "I had sex because I thought it
would cure me. I thought that if I could become
his wife and have his children I would start to
feel like a woman.
"I had sex with a number of guys but it left
me cold. I started having sex with women, too.
That was worse because, whereas the boys I slept
with just wanted sex, these women wanted me as a
woman and that revolted me."
One day, sitting in her GP's surgery with an
ear infection, she picked up a copy of
Women's Realm magazine and read about a
woman who'd had a sex change and become a man.
"It was like. 'S***! It's possible!"'
ON 1 May 1975, at the age of 20,
Whittle began to "live in role" as a male called
Stephen. He told his GP, his boss, he was
working as a laboratory technician at the time,
and his landlord, and all were supportive. Three
months later, Stephen returned to his doctor to
start hormone treatment, the next phase of a
female-to-male sex-change.
But the specialist had inexplicably changed
his mind: "I will not help you," he told Stephen
starkly "You will never live your life as a
man."
Stephen says:
I went home with the complete intention of
killing myself."
"But waiting for me like an angel outside my
bedsit was my GP. The specialist had contacted
her and she had decided to override him. She
handed me a bottle and inside was what I craved,
dozens and dozens of testosterone pills."
Within six weeks, Stephen's periods would
stop, his voice would break. Within 12 months he
would have hair bursting from his chest and a
full beard. He still had 34C breasts, which he
would bind in bandages, as well as a womb and a
vagina.
In my brain I was a male but physically I was
like a body-art project," recalls Stephen.
"Children would stop me and say: 'Are you a boy
or a girl?' It was an acutely vulnerable time
because you are in-between and people see you as
a freak. I was embarrassed but at the same time
I felt fantastic to be finally doing it."
Stephen's father did not respond well to the
news that his daughter was going to become a
man. He went out, got blind drunk, refused to
ever call him Stephen, and when he died a few
years ago, cut his middle child out of his
inheritance.
But Stephen's mother after crying for three
months, gradually accepted him, as did his
siblings. Four years later, Stephen was ready
for the next step: a mastectomy and a
hysterectomy. By now he was at Sussex University
doing his BA. There, at a party he had met
Sarah, then 19 and who lived locally in
Brighton, and fallen instantly in love. Stephen
was terrified of how to broach the subject with
the dark-haired woman he was convinced was his
soul mate.
I invited her to my 24th birthday party and,
on instinct, I decided to invite every
transsexual I knew," he says. "I didn't say a
word but the next day she called me and she
said, 'I just worked out that two plus two no
longer equals four.' She was a heterosexual
young woman from a Roman Catholic girls' school
no less but she decided to be open-minded and
see where it led.
"Even though I still had female genitalia,
and was only part-way through my sex change, we
became lovers within a few weeks. She was very
supportive a few months later when I had the
mastectomy and hysterectomy. Despite her
parents' initial attempts to stop her seeing me
her father locked her in her room for two days
and tried to tell her that her mother would
commit suicide, we've been together ever
since."
Stephen is "amused" by the reaction he gets
from many "standard males". He says: "Some men
we meet as a couple tend to be over-flirtatious
and over sexual with Sarah, because they assume
she misses a penis.
I think to myself 'For God's sake grow up 'if
you believe sex is entirely concerned with
penetration, you're very bad at it. Get a good
book'."
STEPHEN
says that he and Sarah enjoy a sex life that
is different to standard male-female
partnerships, but need be "no less fulfilling".
"I can't make sperm, I can't make babies, but I
can make love," he says. As an activist, Stephen
is used to speaking openly about his sex life
but Sarah prefers to let Stephen do the talking
and maintain her privacy
In the past two years Stephen has undergone
phalloplasty, a series of five operations (on
the NHS) whereby they take skin from his tummy
and build a penis, and skin from the labia to
build testicles.
One testicle is equipped with a hydraulic
pump, which is attached to a reservoir of fluid,
which Stephen can pump into the phallus to make
it erect.
They have given me about six inches," he
says. "It has meant that we can have penetrative
sex for the first time, which is an added bonus,
though for me it is more psychological than
sexual I always felt vulnerable in the gym. It's
boosted my confidence."
But the one thing that no operation could fix
was Stephen's legal rights. His prime motivation
in becoming a lawyer specialising in gender
identity and sexual orientation law was to fight
the discrimination that he and others suffered.
Twice he was fired from jobs when they
discovered he was transsexual.
He was disgusted to discover he had no
recourse. And later, when Sarah conceived four
beautiful children by sperm donor, he learned
that he had no rights over them either despite
being their father in every practical way
Employment law has changed in the past few
years as a result of cases brought to the
European Court of Human Rights by legal experts
like Stephen. Now, finally it is the turn of
family law to be brought into line.
This is the most wonderful thing," says
Stephen. "It gives people like me my dignity I
am open about my past. My colleagues know, my
students know, my neighbours know, my children
know. If I can't be proud about who I am, how on
earth can I expect the children to be?"
Stephen intends to marry Sarah and adopt the
children as soon as the law is passed and the
papers can be processed. He says:
Otherwise, if Sarah died, they could
challenge my right to keep my own children. This
new law might be a tiny bit of social
engineering but it will make a massive
difference to a small number of people like
me."
Of course, his seven-year old twins, who
fairly bowl him over shouting "dad! dad!" as he
strides through the door, are too young to
concern themselves with legal matters just
yet.
They may not realise it but soon they will be
able to call him "dad" and know that their words
carry weight in every court in the land.
It allows me to marry woman I love and to
adopt our children'
