MEDINA: In sleep, they are free to be the people who are locked inside.
That’s what transgender teens told Sandy Varndell, who helped launch a new support group nearly three years ago to help her better understand her own transgender son.
“They tell me when they dream at night, they see their authentic selves,” Varndell said.
“Then they wake up and look in the mirror.”
One thing that can ease that anxious reality check is a binder, an undergarment that can hide anatomy and help them dress as the gender with which they identify.
This month, a $2,000 grant from the Millennium Fund for Children will allow OutSupport Inc. to purchase binders — which can cost up to $50 each — for at least 40 transgender youths throughout Northeast Ohio.
The Millennium Fund, founded in 1999, pools donations from the Akron community to support small programs that are affecting young lives. Operated by the Akron Community Foundation, the fund recently awarded 32 grants totaling nearly $47,000 to efforts in Summit, Portage and Medina counties.
The gift to OutSupport Inc. comes just in time for “New Year, New You,” a January event when the group plans to bring together styling experts to help members with tips on everything from makeup to clothing fashions. Certificates for binders will be distributed as well.
It’s a small gesture of support, Varndell said, but one that can come at a critical time.
Families with a transgender child face costs that can include counseling and wardrobe changes. Hormone replacement therapy can begin at age 16, and surgery is a common goal.
Those too young to be considering permanent changes can still face depression and thoughts of self harm because their physical characteristics don’t match their gender identity.
A binder “is usually the first step that trans people will take, and it’s something that really changes how you feel about yourself,” said Sandy Varndell’s son, Ross. “It just makes you feel so much more comfortable.”
Ross Varndell, now a senior nursing student at Kent State University, started his female-to-male transition as a college sophomore.
Born a female, Varndell first chalked the masculine tendencies up to being a tomboy.
At Medina High School, he helped launch the county’s first gay-straight alliance. At the time, Varndell was still presenting as a female and struggling to understand his sexuality.
“Transgender was so far out there, I thought it couldn’t apply to me. It was somebody else’s story,” he said.
It wasn’t until his freshman year at Kent State that he bought a binder.
“I did a lot of cross play and I would dress up as a male. I told myself I was buying it for that, but then I didn’t take it off for, like, three weeks,” he said. “Figuring out what trans was, and that I fit that description, that took time.”
After guidance from a counselor, and bolstered by KSU support groups and students in the dorm where he was a resident assistant, Varndell decided to break the news to his parents.
“I had heard the word ‘transgender’ but that was someone else’s reality,” his mother said. “I didn’t know what he meant when he said that. So I said, ‘OK, now what do I do?’ ”
She started attending PFLAG support meetings in Akron, but she was uncomfortable with the long night drive and, as helpful as the group was, the conversation rarely focused on transgender issues.
So in 2013, she took the suggestion of some friends and started a Medina County-based group. She put up fliers in coffee shops, got a blurb in a local weekly and reached out to area school superintendents to help spread the word.
The first meeting drew 25 people. Today, the monthly gatherings in Medina routinely attract more than 50, some folks driving up to an hour to attend.
While many of the attendees are transgender, the group also welcomes gays and lesbians, as well as friends and family members. Meetings are broken into smaller defined sessions so conversations can focus on common issues.
Finding acceptance
On a recent November evening, Stacey Parsons helped lead a discussion among transgender members.
The 44-year-old Brimfield Township resident said finally accepting herself as a woman saved her life.
“I tried to fit in society” as a male, she said. Parsons even played football in high school, married a woman and had a son.
But suppressing her true self is what led to her sitting in a car in a Kent State parking lot one day in 2003, contemplating taking her life.
Soon after, she saw a transgender woman on a talk show “and I thought, ‘That is me,’ ” Parsons said.
Today, Parsons is eight years into her second marriage, having found acceptance from her husband, ex-wife and teen son.
Robin Schooling, 17, who has been attending OutSupport meetings with her dad, said she is grateful to have a place where she’s considered normal.
In her small hometown of Doylestown in rural Wayne County, “there aren’t many trans people, if any,” she said. “It’s so great walking in here.”
Robin was still “Travis” when he came out to his parents as a gay male in the eighth grade. But that label never felt quite right.
Earlier this year, Travis became “Robin” after telling her parents she wanted to begin presenting herself as a female.
James Schooling said he wasn’t surprised. The father of seven said he could tell Robin was “different” at the age of 2 and “always acted more like a daughter than a son.”
So his reaction to Robin’s announcement: “OK, I can sort of see that. I’m a pretty open-minded guy.”
Not everyone in Robin’s circle understands. There are conservative family members who don’t approve.
But she said there’s no doubt the country has come a long way toward acceptance. She works in the food service industry, where co-workers and customers all accept her as “Robin.” She’s noticed the effort they make to use female pronouns when discussing her.
“I feel like in past times, if I’d gone to work wearing a bra and presenting as female, I just wouldn’t have gotten the same reactions I do now,” she said. “I’m positively greeted by everyone at work.”
OutSupport meets monthly at Williams on the Lake, a meeting venue in Medina. For information on the group and its meetings, contact Sandy Varndell by email at lgbtqGroupMedinaOhio@gmail.com.
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.