Maybe he is in a realization that he may be bi or he may be in the process of becoming bi. Sexuality is plastic and bisexuality is quite common.
I like your idea that eventually sex will be considered without gender, I know that it has been that way for me all of my life. My mother always says that she feels that bisexuality is the future of sexuality. Which is a good position to have considering my self my sibling and my child. Makes mom pretty easy to deal with.

I find the men in straight porn much more attractive than the men in gay porn.

I'm the complete opposite. Gay friends joke about my gay porn collection.

Father Tony,

I think what Z is trying to get at is that it's important to be aware of the context in which your advice is being taken. And being ethical around our sexuality there's an obligation to make an attempt that each person involved is getting something out of the situation, or at least is fully informed that the encounter will not fulfill any of their needs.

There's a long history of trans people being exotified and exploited by those seeking "the best of both worlds" or an experiment to act out their bi-curiosity. So I'd want to add a mention for anyone who does seek out such an experiment: make sure that your subject is aware of your intentions and will not be harmed by your experimentation. It helps if the focus is not on how odd and unusual those encounters are. For those of us who are trans, every sexual encounter includes a trans person. So it's a bit disconcerting to have our existence seen as odd -- especially by those who we are intimate with.

Myself, I've actually considered seeking out a bi-curious experimenter for this kind of scenario -- but that would be to fulfill my kinky fantasies of transphobic objectification rather than because such scenarios tend to be beneficial to the trans people involved in them.

(And about the pronouns, was there any additional context of your sauna liaison that might lead you to assume male pronouns for such a person? With just the details you mention, one would assume your encounter was with a woman who had a huge dick and not a man who had breasts. That's why your use of male pronouns is a bit perplexing and appears insulting.)

I agree with Tobi. The idea that trans people are "the best of both worlds" is obnoxious, rude, objectifying, and mindnumbingly common. It doesn't make any sense, either - what's the best of each world? Is the best part of the female world breasts, vaginas, outie bits (like penises, girlcocks, strapless cocks and so on), a female gender identity, or something else? What about the best part of the male world? What if you finally find the person with the exact set of charactistics you find "best" in each world, and it turns out that the parts you think are best are the parts they least like having attention drawn to? Or what if they love every part of their body and don't want to be a lab bench for you to figure out your sexuality on?

And speaking of experimentation, having sex with a random trans person is hardly scientifically rigorous. Many, if not most, trans people identify as either male or female, not both. So if you're a lesbian and you have sex with a guy with a cunt and facial hair, it doesn't matter how much more you like his cunt than you like his facial hair - you're still having sex with a guy. That doesn't mean you're not a lesbian anymore - it just means that you had sex with a guy, just like if you had sex with a cis (not trans) guy. Trans women and men are not the lite version of cis women and men. So to actually find anything out you'd probably need a large sample of bi-gender people who are interested in helping you determine whether you are consistently only attracted to them as one gender and not the other. Or you could just accept that sometimes hot people come in genders we don't expect, and no amount of hotness can break our identities without our consent.

Quick question:

Why is it okay to suggest that someone have sex with both men and women, but not with a transperson? If it's just objectifying the trans person, why isn't it objectifying the man or woman? I mean, when we're talking about sex like this as an act - is it really "transphobia" or inclusion?

I didn't gather from Tony's article that he advocated "Go grab the first transperson and fuck 'em cuz they're only good for getting your rocks off!" Instead, I read a post full of good advice to someone questioning their sexuality that also included trans folks (who, let's face it, often get left behind in any discussion of sexuality). Instead of going one of the two often-taken routes of either a) ignoring trans sex altogether or b) pumping up the "he-she/chicks with a dick" shock value, I read Tony recount a very nice and respectful paragraph about fooling around with a transgender person.

As a gay man who often also struggles sometimes with the rabidly PC group we are as versus the imperfect humans we all are, I'd suggest we give Tony a pass on "terminology." He wrote respectfully, he spoke his truth, and he was trans inclusive in a frank manner. He may not have gotten all the terminology 110% correct, but how about we look past that to the intent?

After all, if I'd gone to the baths and met a trans person, I'd also refer to the person as "him." It's a male bath, so there has to be some level of self-identification as male there...

Quick note to Z: Threatening to take your toys and leave over one post out of 60+ contributors is just silly and overly dramatic. At this point you've painted yourself into a corner. Now, if you leave we think, "What a fool for getting that upset over one column out of almost 100 that ran that week." If you stay, we think, "Oh there's that drama queen who tries to hold folks hostage to their own views by threatening to remove us from their presence." Next time, just stick to arguing the merits without the hyperbole.

Interesting discussion. I'd hope that some people would let go of their knee jerk defensiveness to discuss these issues with an open mind, but could fill up a lake with all the things I hope for but don't get.

Personally, I can see how that paragraph is offensive to transwomen. It does suggest a fetishization along the lines of "chicks with dicks." Since I'm not trans, I'm not going to comment on how that should make someone feel, but I can understand how that could get annoying.

But must we post one or two sentence agitated, attacking comments instead of a longer explanation of where we're coming from? I know it's more work, but it's also more likely to have the desired effect. I think we'd all get a lot further if we assumed that people who label themselves as allies were assumed to be acting in good faith unless proven otherwise.

Well, I'm not leaving the sand box just because things get heated... I'll just stay around and throw some more sand.
As I see it Tony sometimes says things that irritate others.. but we all do.
But from reading past posts by Tony I have to agree that I think he was acting in good faith with no intention to denigrate anyone and so that intention was not projected in his words.
But that intention may have been seen in his words by some readers.
I can only speak for myself and so I will use my own mind as an example. I'm touchy, I've been a long time activist especially where it concerns bi inclusion. My first knee jerk response was that he didn't mention the possibility that the person may be bi. But I had to temper that with my familiarity with Tony and realize that there was no intent to exclude anyone here. So rather than rip into Tony (which let's face it I'm not shy about ripping into anyone who deserves it IMO) I posted a response to include the subject of bisexuaity as a possibility into the discourse.
That approach I think would have been far better here re: transfolk. Rather than finger pointing and getting upset I think that we could have all learned more if the intention had been to educate and expand discourse.