It's hard to find the words to explain...

I'm a musician and I'd love to go to jam sessions so I could find other bands to play with. But I'm only comfortable playing and singing around kids (I teach some, and am getting certified to teach full time) because they don't judge me for making mistakes. I'm not going to get called out on social media or have some sexist comment made about me. See, a lot of musicians are straight men and they're not held to as high of a standard as me. Maybe they'd be more accepting if I did fully embrace the object I'm supposed to be. I wear a dress, but I haven't been wearing makeup. In a lot of my experiences, in the music and higher education/grad school worlds, I was either an object (and not even a desired sexual object) or I didn't exist. All of this is made more complicated because I don't fully identify as "woman".

I also don't have any place where I feel remotely comfortable practicing my main instrument. I play several instruments, but none of them feel as high risk I guess. So confidence gets lower...I've been told I was going to fail/not good enough on that instrument because it was technically a secondary instrument. And I have different skill sets that are valued less around here even though if I'm playing to my strengths any ensemble sounds better with me in it.

So I feel like I'm going to be judged for my playing and for my sex/gender/sexuality so it's just uncomfortable to go outside the LGBT and education bubbles. When everything about you is supposedly wrong and bad, it's hard to have any confidence in anything you do. But the main thing I was thinking of I guess was being able to go to jam sessions.