You can be attracted to whoever you want to be. Once you accept an attraction to trans people, the labels get confusing. Worry less about your category and more about how you feel.

Oh, one thing: Having to someday try to hook up with guys is scary. A cishet guy is somewhat likely to be of the sort that see trans women as modified men. And those might happily kill me.

If you're recognizable as queer, it immediately means you're not going to be dangerous in that manner. And that's a very positive thing! It helps relax the atmosphere immensely. Just understand how goddamn insecure most trans folks are all the damn time. The whole "am I trans enough? Am I woman enough?" is there in the background all the damn time!

Being a socially transitioned transfem that has not begun her HRT yet, I have received some flirty attention from gay men, and there's one point that makes me a little uneasy about it:

It makes me feel like they see me as "male enough". I do not want to be an attractive man. Much, much better to be an unattractive and unwanted woman than an attractive man. It's not possible creating a connection to a person if I strongly suspect they are invalidating me in their head.

If you see them as women – or at least as a category that is very clearly not connected with the category "men" –, then absolutely no problem. I could imagine spending an evening with a gay man, although I don't really understand how he's literally gay if he truly likes me as I am. But yeah, at the same time, if he's unable to find cis women attractive, he isn't really straight either.

So, at least I'd need something that makes it clear I'm not being seen as a crossdressing man, because that's not what I am. It would feel insulting to me to be seen as something else than what I am. (And of course, if someone tells me "I do not see you as a crossdressing man", then that kind of makes me feel invalid as well, because it implies you had just been thinking I might be just that.)

Someone who's been long enough on HRT might be much less sensitive about this, I'd guess?

if youre not into them because theyre trans and you still see them as their gender identity its fine. you dont need to be afraid of finding us hot, we are. ive found trans women can achieve body shapes that arent feasible for either cis men or cis women, for better or worse, which depending on your preferences might make us attractive where cis women arent. at the end of the day i think attraction doesnt follow strict conventions anyway. attraction is always eveluated on a case by case basis, so dont worry too much about labels.

I don't have an answer for you outside of just saying that labels in any context can limit yourself. Humans like to categorize things, we don't like chaos, but some things don't fit neatly in the boxes we create for them. And that's okay, you can be partially in different boxes.

Attraction is like that - you like what you like, for whatever reasons that maybe you don't even understand. But there's no "invalidation" of anything. It just makes it hard to explain to other people perhaps. But so what.

As a straight male, I don't get why gay men like other men. I understand lesbians, because they like what I like, so there's common ground. Trans people I also have trouble understanding, not because I think they're weird, but because I don't have their frame of reference to relate to. But I'm totally fine with them figuring out how to make their body match their feelings, I get that part, even if I don't share it.

Maybe it's the male aspects of some trans women that are still present as they change? Maybe something else entirely?