Dear Prudence,
I am a 30-year-old trans man who came out roughly a year and a half ago. I was raised within a strongly female family, went to an all-girls’ high school, and have generally been mostly in communities with women. I do not feel comfortable at all in all-male spaces, including bathrooms, and while I have a few friends who are also trans men, I’ve not really enjoyed being part of groups that are all trans men and transmasculine people. I just prefer mixed-gender spaces.
However, I also really miss women’s spaces. I think partly this is down to the “lad culture” in my country making male spaces (even trans ones) unpleasant, but also I miss feeling like I was part of a community that I just don’t feel with other men yet, not helped by still having fairly feminine interests. I feel like the women’s spaces I am mourning have been taken from me for something I didn’t choose, which I know is an unfair way to think about it, but I don’t know how to move past that. I am on the waiting list to see gender services in my country, but I probably have at least another year to wait, and therapy in our health service is very difficult to access with long waiting times. I do not have any income to see a private therapist.
—Missing Familiar Spaces