[Answered]:
People who are attracted to trans people are far more likely to only be attracted to our hormonal sex than to only be attracted to our assigned sex at birth.
In general in queer spaces it's understood that sexual orientation respects gender identity, for example I like both cis and trans women, but have no desire for anyone with a testosterone dominant body, and I identify as a lesbian.
Some people aren't into trans people of their preferred gender, just like some people aren't into fat people of their preferred gender. In general the rules of politeness that one would follow for the latter should go for the former.
Thanks @captainlezbian@lemmy.world
Honorable mentions @MagicShel@lemmy.zip and @Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz
Thank you all so far for being considerate and kind.
Posed Question: So the question of gender identity as I understand it is basically a solved question: people identify as they identify, and that seems totally reasonable. Go to the bathroom you want to use, just wash your hands. The argument is tautological, a woman is what she tells you she is.
What does this actually mean though at the intersection of gender identity with sexual preference? I don't know where else to ask this to get better responses so I expect to get raked across the coals.
If a woman is a woman, a person who says "I crave girl dick" is then a straight perspective? I have a hard time agreeing with it on the merits, but that might be a me problem?
What is the current, accepted perspective here?
By all means, whatever gets your jollies off go do it. I'm not yucking anyone's yum, at the same time, while people say "gender identity and sexuality are different things" it seems to me that it sort of invalidates traditional definitions of sexuality if parts are all arbitrary?
Can someone help with some steering? I've got little kids and niblings and I don't want to be the inadvertent asshole.
If you want a real mind bender consider intersex people. They are also a minority, smaller than trans as a group, but also have a lot of discrimination and ambiguity from the binary view of sex and gender. Some intersex people have indeterminate genitals, others have mixed features, and some rare few have something close to both sets of organs. They may have a gender which aligns with one or the other general gender presentations, they also may not. It is really a full range of possible outcomes.
They also have some major historical, and current, bigotry around how they are seen and interacted with. Many people with indeterminate genitals are operated on by surgeons based in the surgeons best guess for the sex of the child, not based even on genetic details like karyotype, XX or XY. Sometimes the parents are told that their child had a small abnormality and it needed medical correction, but this is just to make the child fit typical sex norms, not for medical necessity. The surgeries can be very harmful to the child and may lead to difficulties later in life, especially around puberty, where they end up having been "corrected" to a sex which does not align with their gender identity.
Past all the horror, what is the sexual preference of someone who dates an intersex person? This is where externally applied and rigid categories fail. If a cis man is interested in an intersex person who has male genitalia but presents and identifies as female is this straight attraction? The woman here is clearly a woman in all ways bar genitals, so a casual or even in depth check without going under clothes will not identify any difference from female. The woman identifies as a woman, the man sees her as a woman, and she behaves as a woman in all ways bar sex and toileting. Straight doesn't really have to exclude this relationship, but also it may be a bad rigid category, it may be better to say the man is on the straight end and likes fem people. It also may be best to not look for a single word or term and just describe things, saying this guy likes fem people but isn't repulsed by typically male genitals.
I think the language here is hard because we are trying to fit messy reality into boxes. Fascism relies on this simple categorisation of people to form boxes for control and regulation of people. We don't actually have to do this. We can just describe the world we find and use labels loosely to act as a shorthand, not a prescription. Someone could be described based on their behaviours but not have that result in a demand for consistency. As you say, no need to yuck someone else's yum, but I think also no need to define their yum into a tiny box because it is convenient, let them yum without labels and allow yourself the same.