There isn't any significant pressure to assimilate in Buddhist fellowships. Unless you are engaging one of the Very Few which are fairly separatist.
There is one separatist Gelugpa fellowship which is anti Padmasambhava.
There is a worldwide Japanese fellowship which strongly rejects basically all other forms of Mahayana Buddhism.
There is a split in the Karma Kagyu school, which is a separate matter.

Other than these, you can't really get into a pressure situation.

It makes sense for a woman to feel that men are aggressive or predatory, and some really are. But this is a general issue. WOMEN ( and not men ) should really have a lot of social issues. But even in Buddhist groups, this should be significantly LESS of a problem.

You live in San Francisco. That's a really tough environment. I love the area, but the psychic energy is tough there. I wouldn't go on the street or on the BART without some warm up fierce mantra first, like firece Padma or Diamond Dagger. But that is the city, not the fellowship. I personally know four Tibetan fellowships in SanFran, and they should be just fine.

You don't have to fear an interpersonal problem or coercion during empowerment. Just take a good empowerment and practice at home. No one will ask you do do a long retreat. No one will hit you up repeatedly for money. These are general requests to the sangha. No one will corner you individually for money.

Buddhists on the West Coast are very veryopen minded in principle, and many or most Buddhists tend to be nonsocial. Some just get together and sit and say little or nothing! Any way, you're not dealing with Muslims in this context.

You don't need an empowerment to practice Tara mantra. The mantra of Purifying White Tara is
OM TARE TUTTARE TURE MA ME AYU PUNYA JNANA PUSTIM KURU SVAHA.

Try to get a major empowerment that includes Vajrasattva. That is tremendously helpful and also central to tantric Buddhism.

You can get good books without engaging anyone. One important general book is
"The Dharma That Iluminate All Beings" by Kalu Rinpoche, a great modern master.

I have spent decades doing the fierce mantras and these strengthen and purify. They never messed me up, although some evidently have problems. The "practice problem" is smoking and drinking and inattentive driving, not mantra.

No student stands over any other Buddhist student. If you keep the Ten Precepts and are polite with everyone, then there should be no problem. Boundary management can be a very real problem with a few Buddhists, and I've dealt with that myself from time to time. But this is very easy to straighten out in five seconds, like I did with a 17 year old Vietnamese girl at a Buddhist Monastery, who as a stranger attacked me from 12 feet away. I went noes to nose with her, and quietly snarled
"I ammm a teacherrr. Youuuu nnnneeed nnnnot instrrrrrrruct meeeeee." She went into a kind of quasi-blank shock, and I think the psychic cut stayed with her for many months, as it should.

If you are feeling vulnerable, emotionally and mentally weak, even a 17 year old will boss you around! But if you have a decent physical yoga practice and some mantra, then you can handle yourself in many or most social situations.

Summary: if you can handle yourself, you can handle others. So, learn to handle yourself. Psychological counseling in Cognitive Behavioral Methods may be necessary. Check out books by Aaron Beck. Also, buy a copy of
"Getting To Yes"
from the Harvard Law School Negotiation Project.
This handles most social situations.

Also, get a small paperback called
"Zen in the Martial Arts."
This could profoundly change your life.

Your life is precious. Invest your energy well! Don't squander your time. Give yourself to as good future, and make stuff happen. A lto of Buddhists I see make little or no progress over years and decades, due to lack of investing their ENERGY. But that's really all you've got.

You *have* been helped. And I am a dharma professional. No salesman will call. It's all up to you.

If this isn't enough, then email me in six months.

Best from up north,

KT, medical yogi and dagger priest