I sympathize with that a lot. It can be really isolating in fandom. People in this thread have been saying very insensitive stuff. There will always be assholes and people who just don't get it, but there will always be people who do get it or are willing to learn, too. And hey, I look for trans fanfic! I find trans headcanons really interesting to think about and sometimes they've given me a better appreciation of the canon version of the character. I think it may depend on your fandom as well, some of my fandoms have had tons of popular trans fic, some very little to be found. And your social group makes a difference, when it comes to a bigger fandom.

Smut fanfic can be a very shallow place because people are looking for very specific things (for better and worse), so sometimes it helps me to take a step back and spend time in other areas of fandom or non fandom social spaces. Somewhere more chill, maybe just chatting with fandom friends or working on our fics together. As you said yourself, sometimes trans fic and het fic will have similarities, which isn't what certain readers want to read. That doesn't make the fic bad, real life trans/cis relationships straight, your personal take on gay trans erotica wrong to write the way you like to write it. My fic tends to be for small fandoms and rarepairs, and focused on my own specific interests (including trans headcanons), so I sometimes don't get much engagement on my stuff. I'd rather write what I like for the small audience who likes it than write to please a bigger crowd, and I'd rather be myself than pretend to be someone else to be more accepted, even though yeah, it is super shitty sometimes.

I just don't think dropping the tags solves the problem for me, it may get a bit more engagement but also would lose engagement from the people who *are* searching for it, and I don't want to deal with the understandable frustration from people who expected something else.