Growing up as a girl I knew I didn't want to be a girl, and since the only alternative I was aware of was being a boy, I thought that was what I wanted, when I bothered to think about it at all.  Usually I didn't think that far ahead; I just knew I was not a girl.  The few times I tried to see myself as a boy, I couldn't really get a grasp on it.  I just knew it meant not being a girl.

Being a little more grown up as a boy was definitely a better experience.  But I don't think that was because of being [labeled] a boy; I think it was because of being more grown up.  Also, by that time I was old enough that the physical ambiguity really was unmistakable (especially before hormone treatment), so even people who didn't know my history and who consciously believed I was male seemed to unconsciously recognize that I wasn't, and that was reflected in the ways they treated me.  So while I had a much easier time socially as a male than as a female, I think one of the main reasons for that was that I was never really treated like a male.  (The other reason was that by then I could talk.) 

Not only that, but I was still uncomfortable in situations where gender classifications were made, even when they classified me as a male.  I found myself reacting in the same ways that, a few years earlier, I had reacted to being classified as a female.  I'm sure that if the sequence had been reversed and I had been assigned as a male at birth and reassigned as a female during adolescence, I would have known I wasn't a boy first, done much better as a girl when I was older, and still would not have internalized either gender.

So if I were forced to choose one and stick with it?  From a social perspective, I think I would choose whichever sex I least resembled physically.  That way at least people would still make those subconscious allowances.

From a physical perspective, during my female childhood I saw enough of women's bodies to be thoroughly repulsed at the idea of inhabiting one, so my gut level reaction would probably be, "Anything but that!"  But again, I'm sure I'd feel exactly the same way about inhabiting a man's body if I'd had the same exposure to those.  It sounds very unpleasant.  All of my body parts have functions that are relevant to my life, none of them leak without permission (except my nose on occasion, and being another sex wouldn't help that, so it wouldn't even be a fair trade, just an addition of one more leaky part), and there's nothing hanging off anywhere without any bones to keep it from jiggling around.  I like it that way.  If I had been born with any irrelevant, leaky, jiggly parts, I think I'd want them removed at the earliest opportunity.

Here's a question for you: Are the social or the physical aspects more important in your experience of your sex?

"Would you rather be gay or straight?"

You are asking me to do two things here: Imagine being sexual, and then choose a sexual orientation.  I'm pretty sure that what really would happen if I were sexual is that I would be bisexual.  Other people's sex is irrelevant to any of the feelings I have toward them now, so unless there's something about the nature of eroticism that requires it to be focused on one sex only (which can't be the case, or else no one would be bisexual), I don't think that would change if I had a sex drive.

Now, is that what I'd choose to have happen if I had any choice in the matter?

My first choice would be to remain asexual.  If you take away the messy parts, which seem kinda icky to me, I don't think sexual people can do anything I can't do (except make babies, which isn't really relevant to your question, since if that's what you're having sex for you don't have any options except heterosexuality or hermaphroditism), and I like the ways I do it.  I like discovering things that you can't read instructions for in manuals.  I like the feelings that happen in the places where I know how to find them.  I like being free of the constraints of anatomy.  Having sex instead of all this would be terribly limiting.  And having sex in addition to all this (yes, there are sexual people who are also capable of making love in other ways, but many of them never bother to find that out because sex is too easy) would be redundant.  From what I've heard about what people get out of sex, I don't think it would be worth the trouble even if I could feel it--especially if it would be a distraction from what I already have.

But if I did happen to be stuck with a sex drive, then yes, I think I would rather be bisexual.  Anyone I would be interested in would have to be a pretty special person.  I wouldn't want to miss out on knowing such a person just because xe happened to be the "wrong" sex.

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