MILWAUKEE — In his perfect world, Bex Streit would be serving up ice cream sundaes.
"My goal is to maybe just be here to be the guy to figure out how to get some ice cream so we can have an ice cream social but you don't need to come to me for housing or discrimination or any of those kinds of things," he said.
Until his dream becomes a reality, he's working as the transgender and gender non-conforming program coordinator at the LGBT Community Center.
"I try, honestly, just to be present with other trans individuals that are starting off on their journey," Streit said of his role. "Just to be a person that they can come to and have a conversation with and reassure them. It can almost feel like when the light bulb goes off, it's like I need to make all of these decisions all at once. And that can be scary.... to be the person that says, 'Hey, this is amazing. You've already made a really big discovery in yourself and congratulations on that.' Now is where it can be a joyful thing."
Streit studied biomedical engineering at Marquette, but it was his own experience as a trans-masculine person that led him to his career at the LGBT Community Center. For him, he knew something was different around middle school.
"You know the initial puberty age is when I started to feel different and off from my peers in certain ways," he shared.
In college, he said he finally got the language to express those feelings. After graduating he came out as trans-masculine.
"There were definitely a couple of years, early on right out of college, where it felt like I was living a couple different lives and not being fully authentic to myself," Streit said. "There's nothing like a global pandemic to make you reevaluate what you're doing with your life."
The process of embracing himself was liberating.
"Every step I took, whether it was changing my name or some of the physical things like my first masculine haircut, It just felt very freeing. Like everything I was doing was taking a little bit of weight off my shoulders," he shared.
He wants the people he works with at the LGBT Community Center to have that feeling too.
This Transgender Awareness week, Streit said he's happy to see visibility increase, but now it's time for the next step.
"Now that people are aware of what this is, how do we ensure that we are building accepting spaces not just tolerant spaces?"
Streit is one of the many advocates in our community working to build those spaces.
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