A lot of people are indeed that desparate...you've already picked a gender neutral avatar; might I suggest changing your profile to say S. Tram instead of using your first name? That will stop a lot of the nonsense.
You should not have to do this in an ideal world, but your choices are to fight for your "rights" to be open about your gender here and suffer all the dweebs that comes with that decision, or to shut down their opportunities altogether. Easy enough to share the information with friends once you make them ;)...
Since when did playing online chess become an online dating site? I am disgusted by some comments that are being made, even before the match has begun. For example a large number of people have asked be whether I’m female or male. But since when has chess involved someone's gender? Those who are starting chess matches with "hi, are you male or female?" and who randomly add the words 'hun', 'sweetheart', 'darling' (just to name a few) are making themselves appear desperate and hopeless, and are highlighting to the fact that they have obviously failed on ACTUAL dating sites. What is even more appalling is that some even ask you straight up, 'are you single?’ Now I don’t know about you, but I’m 100% sure that I signed into 'chess.com', not a desperate dating site. Chess.com is a site for us to all enjoy a game of chess with people from all over the world, isn’t it? Or have I completely missed the fine print?