This is a tough and important question right now. The thing is, coming out was the single most revolutionary and successful thing we all did. It forced friends and family to understand we were everywhere, and that changed the 'othering' dynamic that authority relies on. It turned them into first reluctant, and later outspoken, allies.
If we aren't visible, they can go back to pretending we're a tiny aberration (which is why authority tries to single out trans people to build on the narrative that small numbers of people don't matter). I know everyone has their own comfort level with how safe they feel but also, at a certain tipping point, the safety in numbers of being out en masse evaporates and the closet door slams shut for all of us. And the closet is a place where we slowly suffocate to death.
The closet is a place of dishonesty, and secrets, and isolation, it is a place where wholesome loving relationship is nearly impossible and our experience of connection is reduced to fleeting anonymous encounters. It is a place where the foundational human need to be known is impossible, where we slowly suffocate and die without the life giving air of love to breathe. It is a place where the joy of living is all but extinguished, and when that is snuffed out all that remains is shame, and fear, and self loathing. And these have the power to kill.
Too many of us have died that way over the years - maybe more than hate crimes. So dying slowly inside of the closet may not offer the safety you think it does, and it's something to seriously think about.
Talk to your friends and family about it today, help them see why it matters. Let them know why you're so afraid and why we need their voices now more than ever. We need all of us to stand up to what might be coming. Together, we can get through this.
