I think the subtext is "a lot of men want to sleep with me only because I am a trans woman," and then are freaked out by the idea of actually dating her, which is an extremely common occurrence for trans women.

There is, as OP alluded to, a very strong fetishization of non-white, non-cis women.

Yeah, very much so. Once you hit your 30s people are looking for more than hookups. I have cis girlfriends who have a much easier time finding decent guys. Heck I have no trouble finding them, they just don’t stick around after they find out I’m trans. I basically just gave up on men my age and date guys ~10 years younger since they don’t seem to have as much of a hangup about it.