Hello all! So I've been having a bit of anxiety lately in regards to dating. I am hoping to gain some insights on your thoughts, and maybe some advice. Thanks in advance!

Brief background: I am agender. I've known this for a while but only recently am being more vocal about it. I tried to put this idea out to a group of friends (I'm using that term loosely) around 2 years ago but ended up very invalidated, even talked down to and ostracized. We were at a LGBTQ club meeting on my college campus. During the meeting there was a survey with lots of, "Who identifies as..." type questions. "Who identifies as a man" and "Who identifies as a woman" came up and I assumed that "Who identifies as neither" was coming so I waited. The girl sitting next to me asked why I wasn't raising my hand for woman (even grabbed my arm to raise it for me) and I simply said that I don't consider myself one. The look she gave me was more than confusion... there was a hint of disgust (which I didn't expect seeing as, out of the group I was with, her gender expression always seemed much more masculine). To each their own though; anyone can identify however they please in my opinion. Anyways, as a result of this incident, I went back into the closet for a while..

I've gained back some confidence and have since began coming out again about my gender identity. Some people in the community still treat it as a joke, but that's another story.

My real concern is dating/relationships. I'm worried that I'll be automatically discounted or won't be desired based on the fact that I don't identify as man or woman. In my head, lesbian females want to date women, gay males want to date men, and bisexual persons want to date men or women. I realize pansexuality and the like exist and dating an agendered person may not be an issue there but does this extend to other sexualities as well? Basically, if you were to seek out a same-sex relationship, would it be an absolute necessity that the person also be of the socially assigned gender for that sex?