Marianne Oakes spent decades building what looked like a conventional life. She became a carpenter and joiner, worked in the construction industry, built a successful exhibition contracting business, married her teenage sweetheart, raised two sons and eventually became a grandmother. From the outside, there was little to suggest the woman she had always known herself to be. Except that she had always been there. Marianne grew up in Britain at a time when being transgender was barely imaginable, let alone something a young person could discuss openly. At 12, she encountered the word “transvestite” in a library book, but it offered no real explanation and certainly no map for the future. The world around her supplied plenty of warnings about people who stepped outside gender boundaries, and almost none about how they might find happiness on the other side. At 25, she travelled to a transgender support group in Manchester, but never made it through the door. Intimidated by the hostile atmosphere of the time, she turned around and went home. Instead, she became very good at living in the world she had been given. There is something almost novelistic about the contrast. The closeted transgender woman became a carpenter in one of Britain’s most traditionally masculine working environments. Later, she became an entrepreneur, running a company with dozens of employees. She was, by any conventional measure, successful.
And yet another life was waiting underneath it. She met Vicki as a teenager. Before they married, Marianne told her that she liked being a girl, although she did not yet have the language to explain what that meant. Vicki stayed. They married, built a family and remained together through the extraordinary transformation that would come decades later. Then, in her fifties, Marianne began changing the direction of her life. After an experience with an employee in distress, she decided to become a counsellor. She qualified in 2015 and soon began working with transgender clients, eventually becoming lead counsellor at GenderGP. There was a remarkable irony in this: Marianne was helping other people navigate gender transition while still negotiating her own. She approached the NHS in 2015 and entered a long, frustrating journey through Britain’s gender-care system. Finally, in July 2018, at 56, she began hormone therapy. The years that followed were about much more than hormones or clothes. They were about discovering what it felt like to stop treating her own existence as a secret. She has written movingly about finally being able to say, without shame: “I am transgender, and that’s OK.”
Today Marianne is a counsellor, psychotherapist, writer and speaker, supporting transgender and gender-diverse people and their families. She is also a grandmother, meaning the children growing up around her do not know the person she once pretended to be. They simply know Marianne. Perhaps that is the quietest measure of how far she has travelled. The girl who once turned around outside a Manchester support group eventually became the woman other people call when they are trying to find the courage to enter their own lives. Marianne Oakes has spent much of her life building things: businesses, careers, families and, eventually, a life that finally belonged to her. This is the story of how she built the last one.
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| “My main strength has always been authenticity.” |
Monika: Marianne, you’ve been a carpenter, entrepreneur, counsellor, podcaster, grandmother and, apparently, a Manchester United fan. At this point, do you actually have a profession, or do you just collect careers whenever you get bored?
Marianne: I believe life runs in cycles. For me, around every 7 to 8 years I get an itch to try something different. I work in private practice at Evolve Online Counselling now, while holding a director’s position at Anne Health, running their wellbeing team and building the services that we can offer the trans community, so in that regard, there is no sign of me slowing down at this point.
Monika: You spent years working in carpentry and construction, probably one of the most traditionally masculine environments imaginable. In addition, you built a successful exhibition contracting business and employed dozens of people. What do you think you learned about leadership from running a company that you could never have learned from a textbook?
Marianne: My strength has always been communicating with people and having them trust in me. This was true as an apprentice and throughout my life, bringing people along on an adventure. As a jobbing carpenter, I was always on my own surrounded by men who were hard, both physically and constitutionally. I had to hold my own and command respect or they would have destroyed me. I am 5’8” tall, so my stature was physically small, but the respect they showed me was through being reliable and intellectually flexible. I found in business, where I worked for some of the biggest pharma companies in the world doing conferences with them, the skills of getting an animal of a bricklayer to trust in and believe in me translated to getting a marketing director to trust and believe in me. We are all just people after all, and my main strength has always been authenticity. I believe in what I am saying. I don’t offer false solutions, just a real, honest perspective. You can’t learn any of this out of a textbook. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s the university of life.
Monika: You have described yourself as someone who has always enjoyed helping people. Was there a particular moment when you realised that counselling was not simply another career, but something you genuinely wanted to devote your life to?
Marianne: When I went to train and study to become a qualified counsellor, people openly laughed, after all, working class ‘men’ don’t become counsellors. Honestly, I only signed onto the course because that itch told me I had to do something different, and I was transitioning by then and the life change needed more than another entrepreneurial idea. So I did a counselling concepts course, which was no more than a 10-week taster course, but I knew in those 10 weeks that this was everything my life had been leading up to.
Monika: That sounds like a real turning point. Did you immediately see counselling as a new career, or did it feel more like something wonderful you could do alongside the rest of your life?
Marianne: This is where I have to be authentic. I thought being a counsellor I would see 6 people a week and it would be a hobby profession. The college did not promote this as anything more, so I didn’t really see it as a career move, more something nice I could do alongside my life and transition. When I closed my exhibition company in 2017, I was doing about 6 hours a week counselling, and another 6 for GenderGP. I had no other income and some debt.
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| “Nothing came easy for Vicki and me.” |
Monika: That must have been a daunting moment. What gave you the courage to take the next step, and when did you finally know that this was your vocation?
Marianne: I approached Helen Webberley and asked if I could set up and run the wellbeing team at GenderGP because I saw the need, and I knew I had the skills to help transgender people navigate their unique transitions. That’s when I knew this was my vocation and a career. GenderGP were at the vanguard of transgender healthcare and I was excited by everything we were doing for my community. In those early days we transformed transgender healthcare and made it accessible to the masses, even working class people like me, and that blew my mind. I also saw first-hand how we were helping people, following them through their transitions and seeing the outcomes. There is so much more I could say here, but that was my driver.
Monika: You met Vicki when you were teenagers and she has remained beside you through so many chapters of your life. What do you think has been the secret of making a relationship survive not only decades, but enormous change?
Marianne: The simple but honest answer is hard work. Nothing came easy for Vicki and me, nearly evicted from our home when we were first married as paying the mortgage overwhelmed us. But no matter what hare-brained ideas I have had, Vicki supported me both emotionally and practically. She worked full time doing accounts for a local company and finished at 5pm, and by 6pm came to do my books for the exhibition company. A partner who shares your vision and aspirations unconditionally to this degree is rare. She doesn’t have a selfish bone in her body. If I took a risk, she took it with me. Then when I needed to transition, she stood by me with the same resolute commitment. I can’t speak highly enough of Vicki. She is special and is behind everything I say in this interview.
Monika: You became a parent, built a business and later became a grandparent. Which of those milestones changed you the most as a person?
Marianne: It’s a bit of a misleading question. They all changed me, and happened at different times of my life when change was right for me. I think becoming a grandparent has given me a second shot at parenting without the responsibility. I was very present as a parent to my sons despite working long hours, but they grew up so fast and I missed having them as children. It was over in the blink of an eye and I was still young. I can spoil them as well, in a way I could never have done with my own sons. So I feel this is the most rewarding thing about being a parent, having grandchildren in your old age.
Monika: What is something about being a grandmother that you absolutely love, perhaps something you never expected would bring you so much happiness?
Marianne: They keep me young, it’s that simple. I can play with them and give them sugar rushes and then hand them back. I think it brings out my inner child and I believe we should all allow this part of us out every now and then. Especially in this period of time, as a transgender woman and a counsellor, there is a lot of emotionally draining noise happening and it’s easy to forget we have a life to live outside of all the battles and politics.
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| “Socially, I love intelligent conversation and good food.” |
Monika: You have also developed a love of music and have spoken about playing guitar. If we disappeared for an evening and left all the counselling, activism and serious conversations behind, what would your perfect evening look like?
Marianne: Socially, I love intelligent conversation and good food. If I was going to a bar, then live music is a must. Vicki is a private person, I think because I am so public with my transition, so she keeps our house a home. After a hard day working, there is nothing nicer than relaxing with her and cosying up on the sofa to watch a film or binge-watch a series on Netflix.
Monika: And since I know you are a Manchester United supporter, I have to ask: what has required greater emotional resilience, transitioning in your fifties or supporting Manchester United?
Marianne: Great question. So, my formative years growing up were Manchester United never winning a league title, and in 1972 being relegated, and still the passion was there because it was part of the culture I grew up in. The last 13 years have been similar, so I’ve been there and bought the T-shirt. Transitioning has to require the most resilience because, throughout my transition, there has been a fire raging that feels endless. Despite this, I like to feel I am ‘thriving out of spite’, and that has to be born out of resilience.
Monika: You spent much of your life without the language to explain what you were feeling. When you look back, do you think you were always aware that something fundamental about your identity was different, even before you understood what it was?
Marianne: I knew I had an affinity with females even as a toddler. I knew I had gender envy, seeing how the girls were able to be girls while I had to mimic the boys, and I was conscious of this from a very young age. I spent time trying to mix the words boys and girls together to explain to myself what I was experiencing. This was way before puberty ever hit.
Monika: What was school like for you during those early years? Was there anywhere you felt at ease?
Marianne: I was quite a distracted child in class and I would get punished for not doing my work. The punishment was to be sat on a table with two girls, Angela Kerrigan and Helen Fox (I remember their names), and I would behave because I never wanted to be moved. I felt comfortable.
Monika: When did you first come across words that seemed to describe what you were feeling? Did they fit?
Marianne: As I grew older I started to read news articles that had trans women featured, mostly uncomplimentary articles, but the words transvestite and transsexual came into my awareness. I was in the school library and picked up the dictionary and found both words. This blew my mind, to know there were words to describe my feelings but, despite embracing the words as if I had found my identity, neither definition really fitted. Like a street kid finding the wrong size pair of shoes, I wore them out of desperation. Transgender came into my awareness subliminally, and over time I felt comfortable occupying this space, which allowed me to explore my gender in a whole new way without a definitive way of being.
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