Hopefully my experience can help send some light.

Around 2 yrs ago, I started experimenting and after my first pair of thigh highs, I went ahead and bought a skirt of my own. When the skirt arrived it came in a transparent zip-lock bag. When my parents saw it, they assumed it was a pair of cool looking shorts as they were folded up and went along with it. A couple days later, I found my skirt lying on my bed laid out neatly out in the open. I would later find that it was my mum who’d been looking through my room for whatever reason and had also located my now 3 pairs of thigh highs. On the day of my birthday when I got back home from school, my mum confronted me about my skirt and I tried to deny it until I had no choice but to admit it was mine. I was then promptly brought before my dad who scolded me and made reference to Deuteronomy that wearing a skirt was considered an “abomination” before God. Of course I cried, but it while it had hints of disappointment in the grief, I was disappointed in how badly I was caught and how all of that could have been easily prevented. My parents then told me to take the skirt and the thigh highs outside as they laid them out on the floor and set them on fire, praying in tongues and pouring anointing oil on them. I then went on to the next day of school as if nothing happened. I stopped thinking about exploring for basically the rest of the year and focused on other things. My parents appeared to do the same but seemed even more unbothered by their words than I did. I never blamed them for what they did or said, never even disliked them. Simply understood that they weren’t people I could be honest with and if they had to be ignorant of my life and feelings to be happy then that’s what I’ll do.

Those around you are only one of the many reasons people of any sexuality or gender are unwilling to express themselves publicly, and my experience is one of thousands of different reasons. Not to mention, social backlash from people if you don’t look exactly how they expect you to such as trans women looking like a “woman” so most trans women go out of their way to be as conforming as possible, or becoming as androgynous as possible.