I'm aware of that. Transgender means someone is pretending to be a gender that is the opposite of their actual gender.

She is clearly transgender, it's what the whole show is about

He is a straight man who pretends to be a woman.

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People: We are never told what Maura's actual sexual preferences are. In his adolescence "Mort" obviously had to go out with, and marry, a woman, in order to fit in. In early episodes she dated women. And in S3 she got off with a man. So maybe she herself doesn't even know fully.
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clearly Maura is not hetersexual - she is interested in women.

It's funny you bring smell into the equasion, as that does change drasticly on hormones, aka yep transwomen smell like women

assuming you are MALE regardless of the clothes you wear or gender you "identify" with ,i don't want to hear that- genetics are genetics a dude will smell like a dude ALWAYS ,vice versa.
So i would venture to say mort is is gay or at least Bi.

Maura (Mort) identifies as a woman, but still has the sexual drives, desires, and responses of a "normal"/heterosexual man.
She is not "gay", or a "lesbian". She never identifies as such - which causes some friction with peopel who expect that a transwoman will want to remove her male parts and assume a female sexual role.
She is a heterosexual transwoman.
She has a female gender identitity, which includes how she wants to live her life and express emotions (although she sometimes has some rough times with that), but a male sexual identity (in her case, since she was born a male, and has male equipment, this means she remains a heterosexual).
These are things that make her character interesting, and multi-dimensional. I'm very glad that the producers/creative team didn't make her the type of transwoman that is often stereotyped in the media - all surgeries, and implants, and all about the lurid sexual aspects, rather than the gender identity aspects that we see in Maura.

Jill Soloway created the pilot Transparent for Amazon.com, which became available for streaming and download on February 6, 2014, and was part of Amazon's second pilot season. She was inspired by her father, who came out as transgender.

I'm on your side as far as respecting all people, and I never intentionally misuse a pronoun. That being said, the reply to the op came off as condescending, IMO, and if you REALLY want transgendered people to be respected, whether you have a horse in the race or not, taking it upon yourself to PROACTIVELY educate people on an individual basis just pisses people off. (The OP only asked about Mora's sexuality. Not what she should be called should the OP ever happen to speak to her).

It just shows a general lack of respect for transgender people to misuse their preferred gender pronoun when you know what their preferred pronoun is. Obviously Moira won't get upset, she's fictional, we get it; but just because there's no victim doesn't mean you're not reinforcing negative attitudes toward transgender people. This stuff makes its way back into the real world pretty easily.
And it seems like the only thing you're educating us on is your ignorance and disrespect. Please, continue.

Of course we all know it's fictional. You can still educate people on using fictional characters as examples.

Dude you can ride your high horse straight to hell.
"First off" it a fictional character. Get over it, I'm so sick of of bad social warriors thinking they are so much better then everyone else. People have the right to use he/she or whatever they want, you nor anyone else can tell them otherwise.
I'm "educating" you on that.

Am I supposed to find that term offensive? I fully embrace fighting for social justice.

^^^^
SJW right here.

First of all (and I'm not saying this to be condescending, I'm saying it to be educating), always refer to transgender individuals as their desired sexual identity and name. In this case, Maura would always be called Maura and be referred to as a "she". It's very demeaning and offensive to call transgender people by their birth name and birth gender. Secondly, transgender people can be straight or gay, just like anyone else. Gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same thing, though they can be easily confused.
Let me break it down for you
Gender identity consists of:
Cisgender, which are people who identify as the sex they were born as (i.e. most people),
and Transgender, which are people who identify as the sex opposite of what they were born as.
If a transwoman (someone who was born a male, but identifies as a woman) is sexually attracted to women, she is a lesbian. If she is sexually attracted to men, she is straight.
Same goes for transmen. Attracted to women? Straight. Attracted to men? Gay. Attracted to both? Bisexual, and so on.
Does this make sense? I haven't seen all of season 2, but from what I've gathered, Maura is sexually attracted towards women, which would make her a lesbian.
Feel free to ask any more questions

Maura is a lesbian. While living as Mort, he lived as a straight man; on the inside, she was always a woman who was attracted to other women. Gender identity and sexual orientation are separate, though, naturally they do interact.