It’s perfectly valid to have preferences on both presented gender and genitalia. Some people only prefer masculine or feminine presentation but are good with whatever hardware; others care less about presentation but have strong preferences on what a partner is packing. Others care about both, others are good with whatever.

Where someone might need to be tactful is if they prefer someone whose genetalia is opposite of that typically possessed by that gender. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that preference, but trans folks have been fetishized and objectivized in the past, and anyone with those preferences would need to be particularly sensitive to that.

Consider this; if a guy says he’s straight, that means he’s into women, right?

Which means he’s attracted to every single woman who has ever existed, regardless of appearance, body type, hair, age, skin colour, weight…

Obviously not. That would be insane. So these categories aren’t absolute or all encompassing.

What about a guy who says he likes blondes. Does that mean he’s never allowed to be attracted to a redhead? If his blonde girlfriend dyes her hair, does she suddenly become absolutely repulsive? If a girl he otherwise has no attraction dyes her hair blonde is he automatically going to find her sexy as hell?

So if someone says they’re straight, that’s really about as meaningful as saying you like blondes. It, broadly, expresses a preference. Nothing more.

The only difference is that societally, we’re taught to treat one of these things as absolutely fundamental to our identity and the other as largely inconsequential. But in truth they both carry about as much weight.

The reality is, you’re attracted to who you’re attracted to. That’s all there is to it. The idea of trying to define your sexuality, in any absolute way, is completely pointless. You are you. There has never been anyone else exactly like you in the history of the universe and there will never be anyone exactly like you ever again. Your preferences are as unique as you are. So whether you prefer the term gay, straight, bi, pan, queer or anything else just doesn’t matter. It’s only a way of communicating a general concept, nothing more.

Now, I want to be absolutely clear about something here; I am not suggesting that these words are not important. They are, because the ideas that they communicate can change someone’s life. But they’re only important as a tool for communication; they don’t define, and they should never constrain.

So if you think of yourself as straight and then one day you meet a pre-op trans woman and think she’s the hottest person you’ve ever met in your life, it’s up to you to define for yourself what that means. It’s absolutely no one else’s business.

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.

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.

People identify as they identify: People will believe whatever they want, about themselves and the world, yes.

A woman is what she tells you she is: Huh? Am I a good husband if I beat my wife if I tell you I am? An honest man if I lie about it? How does that even work? Reality and speech can go hand in hand, but they definitely don’t have to! And if you’re saying “a woman is a person who tells you she is a woman”, then no, again, if being the female or male part of the human species means anything to anyone, the same way that being the female cannabis plant or male dog mean things to people, then, once more: reality CAN go hand in hand with speech but it doesn’t have to, specially so if these labels don’t mean anything concrete to me because it’s in my emotional interest for them not to.

I didn’t understand much of the question but I just needed to clarify that. At the end of the day, whatever you like, if you’re not coercing or manipulating anyone and you care for the person beyond the pleasure their genitals give you, what can I or anyone truly criticise you for? Even if I don’t understand, I cannot hate you for it in earnest, you aren’t hurting anyone, and I cannot even care that much about it. Regardless of how the West feels about sex and lust, people are waaaaaaay more than just that (or at least they should be, what vacuous lives would they have otherwise…). 🤷‍♂️