Hi, and welcome!
You want us to be real? OK, I'll be real. I can see from your post that you're hurt & frustrated, but if you want your situation to change then you're the only one with the power to fix it. Getting frustrated isn't going to solve anything... it's only going to eat you up inside. Adult relationships take a lot of time & effort to maintain, so you have to be prepared to put in the long hours if you want a long-term partner. This is difficult for
everyone. After deciding to transition, I spent a year being pre-T and it took four years to get to the point where I felt comfortable enough to date, so I simply didn't date anyone during that time. I owned my own problem: I knew I couldn't attract gay men until I was the sort of guy they wanted, so I did everything in my power to fix that. I've been back on the dating scene since last October and I'm upfront about my plumbing with any guys I want to get serious with: I have a great deal to offer as a potential partner, so if something as trivial as my plumbing is a deal-breaker for them then I don't want to waste my time with them!
You don't mention how you identify, what age group you're in, or where you live. I'm going to have to make some assumptions based on the content of your post, so I'm guessing you're FtM, quite young, probably American based on your spelling & grammar, and attracted to women. Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of those. You're very fortunate if you're attracted to women: they tend to be more open-minded than men when it comes to the people they date. I know several straight trans guys IRL whose partners identify as lesbian, and whose relationships predate and survived their transition because those women realised that it wasn't a deal-breaker for them. So if you have identified as a lesbian, you can still move in those circles for as long as you're welcome to do so, and who knows? perhaps a partner might turn up. But for every straight trans guy with a lesbian partner, there are
dozens whose partners have always identified as straight, so statistically speaking you're better off looking for a straight (or bi/pan) girlfriend. It's the same with gay trans guys: most of our partners have always identified as gay and have never dated women.
So if you're a trans guy, your gender is male. Which means you shouldn't be ticking a 'female' box on any dating sites because you're not female! And you shouldn't pretend to be female on these sites so you can actively target lesbians because - surprise! - lesbians go there looking for women and you are not a woman. Instead, be honest about who you are, and the right person will come along. OKC is particularly good for this in that you can specify that you're trans, and you can specify that you don't want to see men in your matches. If a dating site requires you to identify in a way you're not comfortable with, or if it forces you to find the wrong kind of partner, then simply don't use that site. Stick with the ones that let you be you. There are people out there who are kind, loving and accepting. It just takes time to find them.
But here's the thing: a small minority of straight men on dating sites (and IRL, for that matter) play a numbers game in trying to find their next conquest. They have zero respect for women and will hit up any and every woman they come across, simply to increase their chances of getting laid. So if you've ticked a 'female' box, you're
guaranteed to get random guys hitting you up simply because they hit up every female they come across in the hopes that one of them will say 'yes'. There's the problem that some people have no idea what 'trans guy' means or that we even exist. So even if you go to all the trouble of clearly marking in your profile that you're a trans guy, you will get the occasional knucklehead who is actively looking for trans
women to date and who will hit you up because he doesn't understand the difference. Setting your profile to exclude male matches can help, but it's always possible for the occasional inappropriate match to slip through the net. Simply block & delete, report if appropriate, and move on.
TL;DR: if you feel you aren't getting the dates you want either because of the way you present or the sites you're using, it's up to you to change these things.
