Transvox - Meeting Marianne Oakes

[00:00:08] Hi and welcome back to Transvox and today again, no Jenny, but actually Marianne Oakes has joined me. Now is it? It's actually Oakes isn't it? They have started off with, you know, thinking of Captain Oakes sending you out into the Arctic. You weren't the first person that's done that. All through my school that was always. Did you? Yeah. So if you say I'm going to pop up for some time we all, we can all, you know, do the snidey laughing. I may be gone a while.

[00:00:36] That's the one. Yeah. Well, Marianne, lovely to meet you. And actually, I think we've met before in the past, but I can't think why, but nice to see you today. Despite what people think, the trans community is a small world. Yes. I'd be surprised if our paths haven't crossed, but thank you for having me as a guest. It's an absolute joy. I was really, when your name popped up on the list of people who we'd love to talk to, it's like fantastic. You are somewhat famous in the community, so it's lovely to meet an icon.

[00:01:03] As someone once said to me, a trans elder. That, I have to say, slightly humbled by that notion, but yeah, I do my work and keep my head down and say my peace on Twitter. So you've stayed on X, have you? You've stayed on Twitter, have you? Yeah, it's almost addictive. I just don't want to feel forced out, if that makes sense. But I've got certain rules, if anybody is still on Twitter. Certain rules, I never look at the comments.

[00:01:33] So even if people have made nice comments, I just, I put my stuff out there and let it go. And eventually I'll mute it if it's getting, you know, a lot of traction in terms of comments. But it's the likes that matter. I think people forget that. I might have 100 negative comments, but I'll have 3,000 likes. Yeah. And I also know that the more people comment, bad or good, the more likes I get, the more people I'm reaching.

[00:01:59] And I always imagine that lonely person who's feeling a little bit lost and feels there's nobody out there, you know, supporting them or feels isolated, that it might just drop into their awareness that, yeah, there is somebody out there championing their rights and their right to exist. So, yeah, for good or bad, I've stayed there for now. So, yeah.

[00:02:26] Detecting from your accent that you're probably coming from not the leafy environs of the home counties, there's something slightly faintly North Midlandish about your accent. Where are you from? North Midland, I like that. Yeah, well spotted. So, I'm from the Peak District, which borders Daffordshire, Derbyshire, Cheshire, and maybe even nips over into Yorkshire. So, I couldn't be more kind of hybrid of an accent, yes.

[00:02:57] So, you alluded to the fact that you started life as an apprentice at Coventry in China. Tell us more. So, yeah, I did that for 12 years. I've served my time on the bench, actually. When I say I was on the building sites, I moved on to that as I came out of my time. Back then, you know, if you're in the building trade, you didn't earn a lot of money. The money wasn't great. You were better being in the factories. But my dad had kind of said, you need to get a trade and do not university. You need to get a trade.

[00:03:26] He didn't want me going into the factory he worked in. And so, apprenticeship was the way that I went. And then I moved on to the building sites because it was more money to be earned there. I've got a caveat to this. I met Vicky, my wife, when we were 15. Wow. Pretty well documented if anybody's listened to any of the other podcasts and blogs have written and that kind of thing. But yeah, we met at 15 and by 19, we were planning on getting married.

[00:03:56] We'd bought a house and I was doing it up and refurbing it. And so I told her I was, I didn't tell her I was trans. I told her that I liked to be a girl. Oh, okay. Because I didn't, I didn't have the language and I didn't. I feel slightly guilty because I didn't want to use the word transvestite because I felt it came with a lot of connotations. And I didn't want to cross dresser because it didn't feel like that. So even then there was lots of questions. Well, brute force and ignorance.

[00:04:27] I got away with it and we got married and I was free to express myself throughout the marriage. So yeah, I was in the building trade. We had two children and then an opportunity came around aged about 28, something like that. And I moved into conference and exhibition, which was still giant skills. Yeah. But it was all indoor and it was traveling the world. And I did that for 10 years or so.

[00:04:58] And then I decided I needed to express my femininity more. So it was a growing process. Bills and bills. I thought, what would be a good idea is if I set up my own business. That was slightly misguided in terms of you do not get more time when you run your own business. You get less time. And then the responsibility that, God, you know, if I come out as trans. This was in 2001.

[00:05:25] If I come out as trans, I may lose business. And then I ended up employing probably 30 people direct, but probably another 20 people as subcontractors. And then all these other businesses that relied on my business to feed them work. So actually it kind of worked against me. But it did, as it became more successful, then I was able to find time.

[00:05:55] And it gave me a financial grounding. As we know, being trans can be expensive. And it gave me a financial grounding to be able to, I don't know, transition in the end. And it's a tricky thing, isn't it? If you're thinking of that path in today's world, isn't it? Because there's an attraction, isn't it, to being your own boss. And I think, and I talk to trans people and say, oh, I can see you do your own thing.

[00:06:22] And I say, yes, but I've had a lifetime of being robust enough and being entrepreneurial enough to actually want to run a business. And I think people underestimate what it is like to run a business, how many hours it is, the sort of stress of it and the joy of it. And you get the returns of it as well as and all that sort of stuff. But it's a very attractive thought. But if you don't have that, if you don't have it in you, it's very hard, I think, to go down that path.

[00:06:48] And I think a lot of people say here in the States a lot, just start your own business and away you go. Whereas, actually, if you talk to a lot of people, sometimes they're much better off being in a company and being protected and working and doing what they need. And then that's where this idea, I mean, I always find the concept, I'm sure you do, work-life balance quite a strange thing. Because as an entrepreneur, you don't really do work-life balance because you're sort of enjoying your work. You're just doing it, really, aren't you? Or you're living your life.

[00:07:15] It's a peculiar idea, isn't it? I can see why you did it. And I did exactly the same thing. And I don't know if it's as simple today. I don't know. What do you think? I don't know how hard it is today. But I think it's a little bit like you mentioned in that word, you know, being entrepreneurial. You know, you either are an entrepreneur or you're not. And one of the things that shocked me when, so I set up this little business, two of us set this little factory up.

[00:07:44] Brute force and ignorance, I have to say. And it grew and it grew. Was that the brand name? Because you've said that three times now. It was called Astro Exhibitions as it happened. But it grew. And what we eventually did, the other lad dropped out because he wasn't entrepreneurial and he just couldn't, he couldn't understand how you don't run a business like you run your home. You know, you're waiting for the money to come in to be able to pay it out and you're forever chasing. Yeah.

[00:08:13] So he dropped out. And then my old company asked me to go in and take over their contracting. So we went from this little, you know, half a dozen of us to me running 20 people. And then we grew it and grew it. And it was really successful for many, for most of the time. But you're right. I think when I first started it, somebody said to me, why have you done this?

[00:08:42] And everybody's saying, you don't want to do this. And I just had this idea that everybody wanted to do it. I didn't, I never thought that it wasn't for everybody. So, yeah, I think, you know, it's a part of who you are. And if you are entrepreneurial, you can either work within a company, use them skills, which I tried to do at my old company. I ended up production manager, but I realised it just was, you know, I wasn't, I was being stifled.

[00:09:11] And I just felt I could do what they did, but I could do it more efficiently and better, which I proved to be able to do when I took it over. But the truth. It's fascinating, isn't it? Because that sort of freedom mindset. I always think in my life, I've traded a lot of revenue for freedom. And it's that idea of being able to, and I think you can see the sort of Venn diagram with the trans experience, isn't it?

[00:09:34] This idea of being yourself and not being constrained so much is, you can see why a lot of people in our world do think they could be entrepreneurs. But there's a very big difference between being an influencer and an entrepreneur, because one implies the sort of, a different sort of structural element to it. So I know that I have great ideas. I knew that I could organise a factory to make things more efficient. We were getting more technological. We were getting CNC technology brought into the workplace.

[00:10:03] The joiners were all resistant to that. I was like, whoa, this is fantastic. I'm not techie at all. But if I didn't have to scroll about on my hands and knees with a router trying to make a curved piece of wood, it could only be good. So I kind of, how do I say, I knew what my strengths were, but what I'm not very good is that it counts.

[00:10:27] I can sell myself and I can sell my business, but I can't sell each individual product. My attention to detail just isn't that good. So I knew who I had to bring in. I knew where I had to build the strengths. And I think that's the trouble. Entrepreneurs, I don't know what your experience is, we're not always focused on detail. We're focused on the big picture.

[00:10:55] And that itself is a skill. So, yeah, I think that's interesting as well, because, I mean, often, I'm sure like you, many people were in there talking to organizations. And my organizational pitch has always been if you want the loyalist, most productive, most hardworking employee, you need a trans person. Because if you accept them and accommodate them, they're going to pay you back really strongly.

[00:11:19] And I think there's also, I understand there's some differences around that and there's some intersectionalities around that. But I've always believed that to be true. And I know in my own organization where trans people work for me, the fact that you just say, yeah, to pay for this, you need to go and do that, fab. As long as you get your job done. Because actually what happens in leadership management is we've forgotten to focus on the outcomes and the outputs. We're just focused far too much on the nonsense that goes into it. There is a tenuous segue here, though, as well. Go on, segue away.

[00:11:48] Because I think my approach to everything was about talking. And then randomly in 2010, I went to college to study to be a counselor. And what had happened was I'd had an employee who had become really unreliable. They'd gone from being really keen. So that was the other thing I did.

[00:12:15] I used to take 21 to 25-year-olds on as like apprentices. I didn't take 16-year-olds. These people had been forgotten because they didn't want to go to college because they were probably experimenting with drugs and alcohol, you know, in the late 80s. Shock horror. Yeah. And they got left by the wayside. And if one of them happened along, I took them on and I gave them a trade. And actually four of them have set up their own business since and they did really well.

[00:12:43] But one of them who had been really loyal and thankful and grateful for everything I'd done for them suddenly became very unreliable. Really? And I took them to one side and I was talking to them and I realized that what they were telling me was bigger than anything that I could choose. And I kind of said, look, you need to talk to somebody. You need professional help here. I'm not the person to come to.

[00:13:09] That planted a seed in my head that, yeah, you know, when I'm working with people to have some skills where I could probably help them more. So I went and in 2010, I went and did a counselling concepts course. It also linked to the idea that, you know, if I'm going to transition, do I want to be managing a joiner's shop? You know, I was ready for a change. So I signed up for the concepts course, really enjoyed that.

[00:13:37] Then I went on to, and if anybody's listening and interested in becoming a counsellor, highly recommend this. The counselling concept course gives you a taster. Then I went to do certificate and then I went to do my diploma and it was five years in total. And with every different stage, I realized I really enjoyed this idea of being a counsellor. And it just so happened that I qualified in 2015.

[00:14:04] And, you know, when you talk about entrepreneur, all the way through my counsellor training, they've been telling me, you're not going to earn a lot of living at it. And then the next question was, what do I do now? So in 2015, I set up this little private practice. Gender GP saw my advert, scooped me up straight away and asked me, would I develop the therapeutic side of the business?

[00:14:31] And that's how I saw a massive potential there then. So I became an entrepreneur within that organisation. We grew up to where we had probably 15 counsellors working there. There was roughly 400 new patients a month at the end signing up. And we used to do all the information gathering session and everything for them. So I was really proud of what we achieved there.

[00:15:00] But it also meant as we shut the factory down, I just went full time doing that. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, though, that there was no master plan. But I think entrepreneurial skills just mean that you naturally gravitate to whatever you're doing. You find an opportunity. Yeah. And I think entrepreneurs find the opportunity in any situation. You can find an opportunity.

[00:15:30] And I'm not talking in a sort of horrible American salesy sort of way that you were talking about earlier. I just think it's a mindset to be able to say, you know, and a lot of it's about the lack of accountability because you're sitting there in your house and you're down and it's all this. And there is an accountability to be able to say, a lot of this is to do with me. And now I know it's to do with me. Now I can learn and now I can move forward. You can learn that process. That's called resilience, which I spend a lot of my time doing. But I think the entrepreneurial thing is interesting.

[00:15:59] It's actually how do you find the gold dust in the middle of something else that you might be doing? And I think sometimes we over-focus on the victim, the infantilization and the victimization of our community. And I think we are a remarkably strong community. I think we have transformative life skills and we have understood ourselves differently. And I wish we would stop looking at ourselves as victims so much and say, do you know what?

[00:16:26] If we get together online, although we're in difficult circumstances, you know, I think there's a huge amount of power and creativity to bring to the situation. I do think we have, maybe that's the job of us trans elders maybe to be sort of saying that sort of stuff. Because you're proving there, aren't you, that you find the opportunity in the midst of what could for other people be seen as a woe is me. It's Brexit. My company's gone. This has gone. Blah, blah, blah, blah. My head's all over the place. And some of it is actually just getting a grip, isn't it?

[00:16:55] Sometimes. There's always an opportunity, even in the darkest of places. There's always an opportunity. It's whether we've got the will to find it. All the skills. Well, I was going to say the skills, but all the skills in the world are not going to help you if you haven't got the will, I suppose. And there was an element, I mean, you know, one of the things that happened with me that why we ended up closing the factory.

[00:17:20] Yeah, a lot of the contracts had gone to Poland, but I hadn't got the will to start again and build them up. And it would have meant taking on more finance, locking myself in. So I'd lost the will to look at the business and find the way through. And, you know, people can judge me for that. But I had to be honest with myself here where I was. I was on hormone treatment. I was actually socially transitioned. There was a little part of my life.

[00:17:47] I'd go into work and I was kind of presenting male. But everything else, I was living completely female. And therefore, you know, that will, this wasn't the life that I wanted. So I'd lost the will. But there was an opportunity to be had. And I have to hold my hands up. When we were closing the factory, every man that we employed, we found work for.

[00:18:16] Nobody went unemployed. And when four of them decided to set up their own business, I supported them with that. So it wasn't kind of a, you know, yeah, I'd lost the will to develop the business. But I also cared about all the men. And I was outed. It was at that time I actually got outed. And to a man, I think most of them would still come back and work for me. I'd set up again.

[00:18:43] So it wasn't that I lost the will and didn't care. I'd just lost the will to, I don't want to be reinventing this. Now, you know, the wheels have come off. So having the will to use your skills, but then, like I say, transferable, I found an opportunity at Gender GP. None of the other counsellors who were associated actually went to Helen and said, let me run this for you.

[00:19:08] They were just like moaning and groaning that they didn't like how the emails come through or something. And I thought, oh, my God, there's an opportunity here. Going back to what you said, though, you're right where the transcript. Well, I like it. I like a sentence that starts with you're right. Go on, carry on. So things that we shouldn't ever forget, that all those that came before us blazed a trail. Trans people have been around since the beginning of time.

[00:19:39] And over that period of time, there's times where we've been revered, there's times where we've been stigmatised. There's times where we've hidden, times where we've been celebrated. It's no different now. We're going through a patch at the moment where politically we've become politicised. The media is, you know, apparently all trans women are rapists or whatever you want to say.

[00:20:08] And I can't argue against that because I'm not big enough. The trans community isn't big enough. But through it all, we've survived. And every time we take a knock, we reinvent ourselves or we dust ourselves down and pick ourselves up and try to be visible in different ways. And when I started working at Gender GP, Abby Hawker, our mutual friend. Oh, yeah. She really empowered me to be visible. Don't hide yourself away.

[00:20:37] You know, I was writing these blogs. They got me doing podcasts back in 2017, 2018. And that was at the time it was all just starting to change. And, you know, there was a lot of bad rhetoric around Brexit had happened, which I think personally stopped the Gender Recognition Act being reformed. And whatever people feel about that. I think if that had gone through, I don't... It was on the cusp, wasn't it? I don't think we'd be where we are now, but it didn't.

[00:21:07] And visibility was everything. And being a counsellor and being out there certainly helped Gender GP. You know, when Helen was going through everything, I think they kind of... I'm not claiming it was all me, but my name was associated with it. And somewhere in there, there was a bit of credibility that, well, there was somebody who was qualified and somebody who the community seemed to trust. We're still there, even though Helen was getting a lot of... Wrongly getting a lot of... And it was difficult, but staying visible.

[00:21:37] And I do think as trans people, as a community, we have stayed resilient and we have stayed... You know, we've been creative in, you know, in how we existed. And the first support group I went to, it was going in the back door of a pub, you know, creeping up the stairs. And, you know, this group of people by hookah bar, crook, had all kind of connected.

[00:22:03] There was no internet, but it was a thriving support group. I say support group, it was more of a social group. We met in the top room of a pub where there was a bar and we could socialise. So, I'm with you there, that in our own way, as a community, we are quite entrepreneurial. And there'll always be people, thankfully, that will organise. And there'll be people that will play a part in making sure we can hopefully continue to thrive.

[00:22:32] And I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because you mentioned this thing about the trans community being very small. And I think that's right. And I don't know whether we do spend enough time reaching out and talking. It's lovely to talk to you. I've heard of you, known about you and all that sort of stuff. You've got to remember, we are stigmatised, aren't we? We are, you know, vilified in the press. And we can't ignore the fact that that does enter our psyche. Maybe the reason I took so long to come out, it could be numerous reasons,

[00:23:01] but one of them was definitely the shame that the trans. And, you know, like I say, I would go into the workplace, which was really full of sexist bigots. And I had to pay my bills. But let's go back to it. So you said you don't have gender GP. Most people know about gender GP. But you've sort of come out the other end of that now. Yeah. I suppose the truth of the matter is that I don't know if gender GP outgrew me or I outgrew gender GP.

[00:23:30] But like I said to you, I'm an entrepreneur with it. I was an entrepreneur within that business. And then when I was being stifled, then I had to leave. And that was that I hold no bad feelings towards gender GP. And it's always painful extracting something you put so much into. But that's life. So it just so happened that two people, one of them and you through gender GP,

[00:23:59] and one of them I'd done a podcast with years before, kind of heard that I was leaving. And they'd decided to set up their own transgender healthcare provider. Slightly different, a different business model to gender GP, but the same medical model, I suppose, for want of a better description. A model of care, which is based on informed consent. It suited me down to the ground. I'm a big advocate of that.

[00:24:29] We can talk about that in a minute. But I at least said, you know, would you help us? And so I went on board to hold them. I didn't, I'm 62 now. And I didn't want to get involved in being part of another business. So what I said was, I'll help you. But I've got to work on my own private work as well. I've always kept private practice for two reasons.

[00:24:55] Gender GP, when we set off, you know, with the best will in the world, we were always, you know, a moment away from being closed down. You know, if Helen had given up and thought, you know, I don't need all of this, which she doesn't. People forget that about Helen. Helen didn't need any of what she took on board. And, you know, I could talk about her faults and she could talk about mine, I have to say.

[00:25:24] But she stuck through this through thicker thing. But there was always that edge that, you know, if she had enough, she'd walk away. She could walk away. So I always kept private practice because I need an income. So I worked on the both. I worked on AnHealth, which is what Lizzie and Susie had set up. And they, I work there part-time still because they're still growing. And I've got, you know, the idea there is that I will build up the therapy side of things

[00:25:51] and we will develop more counselling, but also all the intake sessions are done by counsellors. So I'm the only counsellor there, but the idea is to grow it and I will bring on other people and I'll train them. I'm a big, I get obsessed about consistency of care and that we're all working to the same template. So that's going. Can I just leave in there, St. Marion? Because you've sort of mentioned that, but let's just dig into that a bit.

[00:26:19] So this business is called arm.health, A-N-N-E. And is it producing, I mean, can you get hormones and such like from it? The sort of same sort of thing that you get from trans healthcare, gender care, gender GP. Is it that sort of, is it a medical organisation where you can access drugs? Yeah, yes it is. Gender affirming hormone treatment would be the way I would. So is there medical supervision in this?

[00:26:45] So basically what they do is, it's exactly the same as gender GP, by the way, in that you come through, through your system. So you'll go down the process. I gather information to demonstrate to the doctor that they're going to see, that I see no concerns why this person couldn't consent for treatment. Or they've got good advocacy to help consent for treatment.

[00:27:13] And that there's three things that I've always looked for, and it was the same when I started at gender GP, that I believe that the treatment will be right for them, that they believe it will be right for them, but that we're not going to knowingly impact their life in a negative way. So if we felt they were in danger, that the environment they were in, it could become dangerous for them, then we would talk to them and we would help them to deal with that. But that's the three criteria. Once I'm happy with that,

[00:27:44] they then get to book to see a doctor who works outside of AnHealth. I see. So they will go, I won't mention the names just because the media would probably be all over them. So what they do is they, we've got one, two doctors who work outside of the UK. We've got some medical nurses,

[00:28:10] highly qualified nurses who are prescribing nurses, who don't prescribe, but will do monitoring and all of that within the UK. And then, but the people who work outside have to have the equivalent of CQC registration in their own country. They have to be a specialist in this area. So, you know, qualified in endocrinology and, you know, be, you know, WPATH member,

[00:28:38] have the relative accreditation to be able to work in this area. And what we do is we then recommend them to them and they, all the prescriptions and everything are done in their name. I see. It's a technicality, but if we were wanting to do it in this country, we'd get closed down tomorrow. Yes. Because they just don't like transgender healthcare. It's nothing about safety. The doctors we use are at the top of the game. They're not just anybody. And when,

[00:29:06] when Lizzie and Susie were setting it up, they were getting in touch with doctors and there wasn't a compatibility. They didn't take them on. Yeah. You know, so it is, it's not a, we'll, we'll accept anybody that's willing to do this. There's a, there's a, there's a level of quality that they want to be assured in their own mind. The, we, I have to say we work with under 18s. Good. We work with all age groups,

[00:29:35] but it is a mandatory for under 18s. It's mandatory that you see me twice for the eight over 18s. Most of them I see twice. But if some people, you know, if I was working with you now, I'm not going to make you see me twice, but if you was at the right at the start of your transition and you were still some coming out to do, then we, I want to give people time to talk about that and be able to work with them and say, have you thought about this, you know, starting hormones and you've not come out to your parents and you're living in their house.

[00:30:04] Have you thought about the impact that might have on your relationship? So, you know, generally you'll, you'll get to see me twice, but what they've done differently is it sounds expensive, but what you pay for in your subscriptions, and you can go to the website to see all this, all your blood tests are included. Everything is included. Your doctor's appointments, everything is paid for apart from your medication because you've got to

[00:30:34] get that from the chemist wherever. And do you, and are you prescribing puberty broccolis? Cause they're not legal in the UK at the moment, are they? So there's a misconception. Don't, don't reveal anything you don't want to. This is not investigative. That's just curiosity. So, so I don't get too involved in the legalities in terms of that's not my concern. That's the people that own it, which is Lizzie and Susie. So puberty blockers aren't illegal because they're being used for other kids.

[00:31:03] So the idea that it's illegal to dispense them. Yes. And what they've done is they've made it hard to get all love in the UK. So you have to travel abroad. So with puberty blockers, I won't say too much, but if they go to the website, you can see what, what they do. But basically you travel abroad. It's got to be administered abroad. They've made it illegal for parents to administer it now. So it has to be administered abroad.

[00:31:32] So it's not cheap, but the unhealth is a not for profit. So the more subscribers they get, they will then start helping people who, where it's not quite so affordable, but they've set a standard of quality of care that is reflected in what those that can afford it will pay. But as they go and they start to turn a profit, then that profit is going to be reinvested back in helping those less fortunate. So if you want more information,

[00:32:01] you need to pop over to arm.health, which is interesting. So it's, I know we've been gabbing away for ages. We hardly sort of scratched the surface. We'll have to do a part two, if this is all right with you. But if people want to get a hold of you on your own business, isn't that evolveonlinecounseling.co.uk? So yes, evolveonlinecounseling, I've kind of, I set up as a, when I started at GenderGP, I kind of set evolveonlinecounseling up.

[00:32:30] And it's always been going on in the background. So there's two things to remember about evolve. Not everybody wanted to go to GenderGP. Some people are self-medicating. Some people are at the very start, don't know anything about transgender healthcare, or even whether they want hormones or not. So I've always had that side, that going to a lesser degree, but now it represents half my income.

[00:32:58] So if anybody, any of the listeners are listening and you want to just come and have a talk about transgender healthcare, or you want to explore whether it's even right for you to consider medically transitioning, anything, you can come and see me. I do surgery referrals. So, and I'm doing a podcast series at the moment talking to some of the most prominent surgeons in the country, because I have a belief, or hopefully today, us having this conversation,

[00:33:27] people get to know me a little bit better. And every time I do a podcast, they learn a bit more about me and I learn a bit more about myself. So, so you can do that. I can do passport letters, things like that. But counselling is first and foremost, it can all be done online. Although, as you can see here, I've got a therapy room. I don't know if that was a real picture or was that your... No, no, this is my background. Yeah. Very good. And the brick, it's really nice. The brick? Stonewall. Yeah,

[00:33:58] stonewall. That was built in the 1700s, so I couldn't throw over that. I was going to say, that's not one of those walls you knocked up as your exhibition company. No, I'm actually in my garage, believe it or not. Oh, okay. Converted part of a garage. So yeah, you can come and see me face to face. Some people do, they'll travel, I've had people travel from all over the place to see me face to face for the initial session and then they'll work online. I've worked with people all over the world. There's a lot of controversy about how,

[00:34:28] you know, if, whether I'm registered to work with somebody in a certain state in America. But what I do say at the start is, look, I don't know if you'll be able to sue me if I do anything that's unethical or whatever, but if I'm the right person for you, I'm willing to talk to you if you're willing to talk and if at any stage you feel it's getting testing, then we can bring it to a close. So, you know, I'm open and upfront about that. But my, as a counsellor, 80% of therapy

[00:34:57] is finding the right person. So why would I reject somebody who just doesn't happen to live in the UK if they want to come and see me? So, yeah, I've worked with people across Europe and in the States in particular. It's interesting how doing it, doing therapy online means you've got people can search from wherever they are as long as they can speak English because I'm, as you can see, my accent doesn't help me to... I was going to say,

[00:35:26] you've got a foreign accent already. Well, it doesn't help me to learn foreign accents. Not very good with languages. But as long as it can speak English and they can understand me, the therapy can work. But I also have to say as well, whoever's, if anybody's thinking of having some counselling, I can't claim to be the right counsellor for everyone. And sometimes my approach, which is affirming, is too much for somebody to take on board. And, you know,

[00:35:56] and that's okay. You know, I'm not going to be offended if you're not, you know, you don't feel I'm the right person. I would say, I always offer people a 30-minute free Zoom call to get to know me before they invest any money in speaking to me. Because I don't, I'm not in, I don't need to encourage people to come and have counselling with me. I've got, you know, a reasonably full diary. But I want people to get the right therapist. And that's really, really important. Somebody they feel

[00:36:25] they can connect with. Like say, 80% of therapy is the two people in the room. You know, all the skills, all the qualifications count for nothing if you don't make that connection. Well, I think I was part of the team that evaluated the effectiveness of counselling many, you know, years ago. And actually, there's some quite contentious information about that, especially about how many sessions people have. But the key thing is the number one thing that has, which drives effectiveness is the quality of the relationship you have. Yeah.

[00:36:55] You have to be, you have to have that connection somehow, haven't you? Yeah. And there's no, there's no, you know, there's no rhyme or reason why you have a connection with people or don't have a connection with people. And it's, and I think most, most therapists are quite relaxed at the idea of someone says, you know, you're not for me. You know, I, and I get this in the commercial world, you know, I have a particular style of coaching that I use in therapy and in the business world. And people will say to me, well, you're far too challenging for me. You know, I want somebody who's going to tell me I'm great. I said, well, you know,

[00:37:25] crack on them. The other side of it though, as well, is counselling isn't a monolith. You know, it's, it's, it's what the person wants from the therapist and it's really, my job is to make sure that I can be what they need. So sometimes I'm just a mentor. Sometimes I'm a sounding board. Sometimes I'm a parent. Sometimes I'm a teacher. You know, the, the, the, the transference

[00:37:54] and the counter transference is, is, is, is moving all the time and every client I see, they'll come on some weeks and, you know, we'll just laugh and joke about something that's happened that week and how they dealt with it. Other times they'll come in and they'll be, you know, they've had some rejection or they've had a bad experience and, and I just sit with them. But the power of that safe space is, can never be under, under, under value. Can it? It's so important. That,

[00:38:24] and that acceptance as well, you know, the, whoever you are, whatever you've done is accepted here and, you know, we talk about what it means. Do you know, people say, this is going to sound silly and I, and I always carry it. Well, nothing's silly. If it's worth saying, it's worth saying. It doesn't mean to say we won't laugh about it or it doesn't mean to say that. It wasn't silly. And maybe, yeah, well, I was going to say in the context of things, you know, you may feel it's silly, but if it's worth saying, let's say it and then we'll, we'll work on that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:53] It is just a safe space, but I do have to say here as well, when I work with young people, I would say 80% of what we talk about is the parents. Of course. And the struggle is that the parents are doing, they're working really hard. This is a difficult thing for anybody to go through and I'll always say, I'm not the parent of a trans teen. How do I know what it's like being the parent of a trans teen? But I do wish more parents would come.

[00:39:23] Before they send the kids. Yeah. Come and have some sessions with me because you don't know what you know. You don't know what you don't know. Of course. You're doing everything right, but your push to be the expert for your child and get an advocate for them can actually stop you listening to, the question isn't, you know, what does my child want? It's what does my child need?

[00:39:53] Yeah. And, and, you know, I do get people come to me and say, they want for nothing. Never does anybody come and say, you know, I don't know what they need. Yeah. You know, I want to, I want to make sure they get what they need. So, if this isn't having a dig at parents, by the way, and anybody listening, don't misunderstand me. It's, it must be frightening at times. It's a battle, you know, it's something nobody's prepared for.

[00:40:22] There's no good education, but don't be frightened to come and have a talk. And if nothing else, just come and have a, you know, have a one-off session with me and I will help you to find, you know, to understand what help you need. And if that's going off somewhere else, that's perfectly fine. But, you know, if finding an objective space to talk, Yeah. is really, really important. And that's one thing I'd like to think of is objective. I have firm views on lots of things and I'm sure we could disagree on

[00:40:52] aspects of things. That doesn't mean to say, I don't try to understand your point of view, but if somebody comes in with a really strict criteria about what it is to be trans, I'm not there to argue the toss with them. I'll challenge them so that they can understand how that might look to somebody else. I had one, one girl say to me once, I can't transition unless I'm going to be a beautiful woman. And I just said, have you thought,

[00:41:20] if you were in a room of 10 women now, how that would sound? And how that would make them feel. They were a little bit shocked. Anyway, I worked with them probably 10, 12 sessions. I'll never forget the last session. They said, you know, when you challenged me on that, I'd never stop to think about what I was saying. And they said, now I'd be happy to be the ugliest woman in the room. As long as people see me as a woman, it doesn't matter. That's right. That's the case. That's all I want

[00:41:48] is to have my gender identity acknowledged. Yeah. So, yeah, just, I will challenge, but I'm not going to say you're wrong and I'm not going to say you shouldn't think like that. But I'll challenge because that's part of being in counselling is to have you. It's part of learning and part of learning is reflection, isn't it? And you can't learn before reflection. And I think part of the problem, part of the issue with a lot of people is that it's that balancing between reflection and provocation because sometimes you do have to learn something.

[00:42:18] Sometimes it is important to ask that question because that question in itself is a way of someone learning for themselves, isn't it? And that's what's really important. I'm just going to quickly flip back to where we were earlier when we were talking about the trans community, weren't we? And it's very fragmented, the trans community. Lots of different, I was going to say leaders, I don't know if the leaders, there's influencers or whatever. Yeah. And they start throwing out statements

[00:42:47] like that's true for everybody. Yeah, it's not, is it? I get people who will say to me, oh, I would never, you know, you don't want to go to gender GP or you don't want to go to Unhealth or you don't want to go to gender care, wherever they've gone for their trans health care. The way I did it is the only way. You've got to do it on the NHS. You've got to do, there's no fixed way. There's no right way. There's only the right, there's only what's right for the individual. So I would never advocate

[00:43:16] everybody come to Unhealth. That's not, I know Unhealth won't be right for everybody. Like I know I won't be right for everybody as a counsellor. But what I would say is educate yourself about trans health care. What are the different models of care? Who delivers what? Yeah. You know, and, and, you know, do you feel that that would be right for you? So that's really important to, to, to understand that there, the trans community can actually be quite judgmental.

[00:43:46] You think? There's only one way of being trans apparently and that's somebody else's way and not our way. So when they come into therapy with me, it's to help them to be them and be the kind of woman or the kind of man or, or the, you know, non-binary or gender fluid or whatever and that's okay. And I, there are people have come to me who believe they can't be trans if they don't want to medically transition and I'll say, well, you know, are you, are you questioning your gender identity? Yeah.

[00:44:16] You know, well then probably to some degree you are trans but then when you learn about their living situation, their careers, they've got young children, they, they want to be able to manage their dysphoria but they can't just enter, they can't afford probably healthcare, they're not in a position to go through it. So you help them to understand what they can do to manage their gender dysphoria. So it's not, it's not, it's not a one outcome but we don't help ourselves

[00:44:44] by trying to, you know, believe that what we did was the right way. We need more objectivity and help people to find what's right for them. Yeah. I'm going to say we have to bring part one to a close if that's okay with you because I'm blessed with the, anyway I'm not going to go there but it's been an absolute joy to talk to you today. Please, please, please come back. Would you promise you to do that? Of course I will, yes. And when I'm ready to do the third series

[00:45:14] of Bridging Identities you must come and be a guest on my... Can you imagine there's going to be some sparks? Well, it will be good to kind of be on the opposite side of this. So yeah, thank you for having me as a guest. Pleasure. Thank you Marianne Oakes for joining us today and you can get hold of Marianne at evolveonlinecancelling.co.uk or at ann.health. I will drop the links into the show notes and great. It's been an absolute joy. Please come again

[00:45:43] and I'll speak soon. Thanks for listening to this episode of Transvox. It's been a joy to have you with us. If you want to make contact with us you can contact us at gillian at transvox.co.uk and all of our money goes to our nominated charity and Jen, you've chosen the charity for the next number of episodes which you want to be chosen. Our charity is called Beyond Reflections which is a charity

[00:46:13] that provides support and counselling to trans people, non-binary people and their friends and their families across the UK. An amazing charity doing some amazing work really important so please if you can give. Great. And if you want to go and have a look at Beyond Reflections it's beyond-reflections.org.uk but as I say if you'd like to make a contribution to what we're doing because we love to help the people who help us. Again, if you've got ideas for the show things you'd like to ask us questions, comments,

[00:46:43] applause or brickbats feel free to send it all in to gillian at fransvox.co.uk Until the next time goodbye. Bye bye.