As a child, when December 25 came around, Stephen Whittle felt confused and left out.

"Christmas would come and I would be given a doll … and I wanted a cowboy suit. That was my big Christmas wish … why would you give me something that I would hate?" he told Jane Hutcheon on One Plus One.

Born female in Manchester in 1955, he knew from a young age that he was different. He would swap dolls with his younger brothers and dreamed of becoming a train driver.

"[I wanted to do] all the things that boys wanted to do and never, never the things that were meant to be dreamed about," he said.

It was at school sports day when Whittle, 10 years old at the time, started questioning his identity.

"There were girls races and there were boys races. I remember I couldn't stop crying because I was always going to be in the wrong race," he recalled.

"But I didn't know what to do about it then."

Desperate for answers, he spent his spare time in the small medical section of the local library.

"I must have read every book in that section over the last five years [of school]. You know going in and out of school, sitting and reading for an hour, and trying to find — me — in them," he said.

He kept searching through books and magazines in the hope of gaining a better understanding of himself and why he felt the way he did. But he found nothing that he could relate to.

"The things in the books that might have been me, like one book said there were 'butch dykes'. And I thought, I don't know how I would feel about that," he said.

"When I was older, I had experimental relationships and I realised I didn't like women thinking that I was a woman."

Then one day when he was 17 years old, while he was sitting in his local doctor's waiting room, he came across a magazine story about a transsexual — a woman who had transitioned into a man.

That moment, he said, changed his life.

"The thing had really like turned my world upside down. It was like all that I could think about, dream about. And in that moment, was how I was going to find a way to the doctor," he said.

In 1975 at the age of 20, Whittle began living as a man and taking hormone replacement therapy. Over the years he has had surgery and became the 13th female-to-male transsexual in Britain.

"It's not that I wanted to be like everybody else or that I wanted to be different. I wanted to find a way so that I could see — me — in the mirror, and that people could see me as well," he said.

Knocked back by fertility clinics

Sorry, this video has expired Transgender activist Stephen Whittle on being recognised as a husband and father ( Jane Hutcheon )

Four years later, he met his partner and now wife Sarah Rutherford, and they have had four children through donor sperm and artificial insemination.

But their journey has not been easy. He and his wife were knocked back by several fertility treatment clinics and it was then that Professor Whittle decided he would study law so that he could challenge the clinics and change British law.

"When clinics said that they wouldn't treat her, to me what they were saying was that she would never ever be a good enough woman to become a mother because she loved someone like me," he said.

"I was so angry and she was so upset."

Despite successfully challenging the system for his wife's right to have a baby, Professor Whittle struggled for years to find a stable job. From one workplace to another, he was asked to leave when his transsexual identity had been discovered.

"I was literally sick to death of being sacked and trying to hide this thing. I had half of my life which was really hidden," he said.

"We lived in a house where none of the neighbours knew and yet every time I got a job and the paperwork would have to be given, somebody would find out and I would lose the job."

Professor Whittle eventually started teaching on weekends at Open University and discovered his love for the profession. He soon got a job delivering computers to the law faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University and not long after was asked to teach criminal law.

"I was very, very, very fortunate that Manchester Metropolitan University has never, never ever questioned who I am," he said.

"Always thought that I had a right to be and … allowed me to progress through the promotional ranks to the position I am now."

Finally being accepted

Now Professor Whittle teaches equalities law at the university. And every year, he has made it a tradition to personally share his story with his students.

"I do [it] because I think it's very important to me that they don't gossip because they will find out and they'll make up the story and I want them to know the truth," he said.

"When I first used to do this, 23 years ago, they were sort of silent and mouths would drop open.

"The last two or three years, they stood up and clapped. Yep, they stood up and applauded me.

"And considering half of the students had come from British Muslim families, that is really something."

Whittle actively continues to campaign for equal rights for the trans community and co-founded the transgender activist group Press for Change.

In 2002, he was given the Human Rights Award by the civil rights group Liberty and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to gender issues in 2005.

Not all Professor Whittle's family has come to accept him for who he is and he has faced opposition from some of his siblings about his public life.

However, he maintains that he will continue working until he is satisfied that every child in the world has the right to feel comfortable about who they are.

"I will stop one day but I will only stop when not one child has to go through what I went through, ever, ever again," he said.

Professor Whittle was in Australia to take part in the Gender Trailblazers event during the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

For the full interview with Jane Hutcheon watch One Plus One at 10:00am on Friday on ABC TV and 5:30pm (AEDT) on Saturday on ABC News 24.

