In Britain, the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 gave transsexuals the right to marry and have their birth certificates changed to declare that they’re female.

But in the fetish sense, ‘transsexual’ has come to mean a ‘chick with a dick’ – a ‘pre-op’, as in ‘before the operation’ (‘post-ops’, as in they’ve had the snip, are popular too, judging by escort advertisements). In the fetish and porn worlds T Girls are being celebrated in a way that’s completely different to the endless ‘Nadia from Big Brother – my struggle pieces in supermarket magazines for middle-aged women. And this is beginning to spill out of the frontier town that is extreme sexuality and into ‘real life’.

Straight men having sex with T Girls has even received the ultimate stamp of approval: celebrity endorsement. Champion shagger Colin Farrell did the nasty with Elaine Lancaster, a not-enormously convincing T Girl, while attending Jamie Foxx’s party at the late Gianni Versace’s Miami mansion in July this year. Witness reports differ on who exactly seduced who, but Farrell was apparently seen leaving a bedroom ‘ badly disheveled, unbuttoned, unzipped, and with her shocking-pink lipstick all over his face.”

“Yes, we kissed,” blushed Ms. Lancaster to the News of the World. “But Colin is such a sweetheart I don’t want to say any more and cause him complications on a personal level. Let’s just say he was a gentleman.”

Further validation comes from the world of fashion in the form of photographer Terry Richardson. He’s the trailblazing big-league fashion snapper who made the ‘white trash’ look trendy. But Terry is arguably more defined by his ‘personal’ artistic work – amateur porn – influenced shots often involving himself—than the fashion shoots he rolls out for Vogue et al. He has consequently been a huge influence in making pornography acceptable to the chattering classes in the same way that he’s broken sartorial trends into the mainstream. And his latest obsession is T Girls. His protégée Cellina von Mannstein took the pictures you see here.

And T Girls are about to cross over from the elitist media into mainstream entertainment. In Basic Instinct 2, no less, word has it that the Sharon Stone character ‘novelist Catherine Tremmel’ has a pre-op transsexual lover.

Lesbians, it seems, have become terribly Nineties. In the early 21st century it’s all about transsexuals. And what’s good enough for Colin Farrell and Terry Richardson is good enough for me. So after a few months of seeing them in porn, (ver) furtively surfing the likes of dudelookslikealady.com, I’m going to have sex with a chick with a dick. Does this make me the most irredeemable pervert, so jaded that it’s the only place I can get my kicks? Or some ‘sex addict’ driven to depraved acts by my lack of self-esteem? Or does it mean that I am (orchestral stabe) . . . gay? Readers of a sensitive disposition when it comes to any of these subjects should keep reading.

There aren’t many sexual taboos left, unless you’re poor old EastEnders ’Steve McFadden, recently pilloried in the tabloids for his alleged ‘dogging’ and supposed interest in T Girls, who seems to be dying for the nation’s sexual sins. Group sex, bondage, role-play and mucking about with sex toys are everyday activities, openly aspired to amongst us young, trendy professional chaps. Buy ladyboys are still seen as a bit weird. Thanks to the glory of the internet, I’ve waded through almost every kink over the last few years. I even got into softcore lesbo for a bit, which was handy simply because there’s so much of it out there. When I arrived at the T Girls section of community-minded ‘free thumbnail gallery’ drbizzaro.com, I was very surprised at the erotic potency of their image – an over-sexualised ‘ideal’ of womanhood with an erect penis – the aesthetic opposite of eunuchs, the ‘guys without dicks’ that did all the crap jobs in ancient harems. Porn featuring T Girls and ‘real’ women is almost a logical step forward – when the guys are just props with dicks, why not, aesthetically speaking, have a glamorous bird in suspenders on the other end of the dick rather than some hairy sweaty guy?

Which doesn’t stop oneself, as a hairy sweaty guy, quite fancying having a go at one. My original plan is to source a couple of particularly intriguing T Girls and have them round to my flat, get loads of drugs in and have a massive trans-cocaine-sex party. But, as I come very close to bottling out of the whole thing, one afternoon I summon my spirits, pick up the phone, narrow down a shortlist to who’s available in the next couple of hours and find myself making the journey down to that ‘high class’ prostitute hinterland between Paddington and Bayswater.

I should say here that I’m not always into hookers – flinging it up some disinterested bird using a condom is something I’ve only ever been driven to in Amsterdam after taking in the window displays of the red light district for hours on end really off my head on E. This is something very different. On the way there I feel as nervous and as full of adrenaline as I did when I bought my first porn mag, and walking up the (very respectable) street to “Tanya’s I’m convinced everyone walking past knows what I’m up to.

“She”, as I shall respectfully categorise Tanya and any other T Girl in this piece, buzzes me into her opulent apartment block, but I have trouble finding the flat. Luckily I pass a neat blonde west-London chick on the stairs who offers me a flirty ‘hello!’ like I’ve just moved in or something, and who’s kind enough to point obliviously in the right direction.

I ring the bell and steel myself, as I recommend you do over the next paragraph or so. There’s none of that ‘I made my excuses and left’ crap here. Tanya herself is quite petite, with soft Mediterranean features which help her femininity. Although not as lovely as in the photos on her website, she’s cute and gives off a lot of sexual energy. We start snagging in that light manner you can sometimes get away with, with hookers that quite like you. We’re on the bed, and she has a bit of a stiffy. So do I. Our knobs are kind of jerking about between each other and it feels quite fun and certainly novel.

So, in the name of journalism, and because I quite fancy it, I suck her off for a bit. It was kind of cool – compelling how they’re soft and hard at the same time, eh ladies? But the novelty wears off quite quickly, and after a short time I can’t be bothered with it. She gives me an excellent blow job through the black condom (definitely a sign of class in a hooker) that she’s put on me and then I penetrate her up the arse. Yes I am careful, and I even whip my dick out half way through to check the condom hasn’t been broken. But I do give her an only-fair reach around. I am rather proud to say that Tanya comes first.

Stumbling back to Bayswater Tube in a bit of a haze, the most overwhelming feeling is how much less of a big deal it was than I had presumed. It was far more like making love to a ‘real’ girl than I had imagined. But at the same time, Tanya not being a ‘real’ girl somehow didn’t feel right – emotionally, biologically, pheromonally, whatever. Even the knob thing wasn’t quite as fascinating as I thought it might be. And she was slightly salty to kiss, and had stubbly hair in places – characteristics that seemed more male than the dick itself, surprisingly. That mysteriously powerful intensity you normally get with a hot girl – and Tanya was a really cute, sexy, entertaining little thing – wasn’t really there.

Which lays to rest the “Does fancying a bit of T Girl action mean you’re actually gay?’ question. This did indeed go through my mind to no mean degree before shagging Tanya. I do like the Pet Shop Boys and have gauche taste in clothes. But having sucked on the penis and tasted the lips of someone who at least used to be a man, I am now quite convinced I like girls (real ones). All men worry a bit whether they might be gay, and I don’t mind admitting to a bit of that ‘David and Saul’ type homo thing that we probably all possess. But as much as the whole event was perfectly pleasurable, I wasn’t really into the masculine elements of chicks with dicks.

“Of course liking transsexuals doesn’t mean you’re gay,” says noted sex researcher Doctor Petra Boynton of University College London. “We like to think we’re very liberal when it comes to sex, but actually we love to polarize, even though sexual impulses are one of those things that are completely unique to every human being. Our real sexual desires are far more obscure, erotic and dark than even our current ‘sexually liberal’ culture would come close to admitting. And this is what as a researcher I find so interesting about the T Girl trend – that it blurs those established, but essentially untrue, boundaries.”

So, if it’s not some latent gay thing, why are some men really into T Girls? I put this to the lovely Johanna, in the pictures with the shorter hair. Johanna is a bit of a celebrity transsexual-about-London, doing PR, nightclub doors and TV (meaning television, rather than transvestite) work. She’s a fully trans-gendered, a post-op (Gloria, with the long hair, is a ‘pre-op’ you’ll be pleased to know) who understandably gets a lot of attention from guys – before and after having her penis removed.

“Obviously for some men it is going to be a stepping stone on to a gay lifestyle,” she says. “But in the main I think it’s just a fetish that quite a few men have. People; women and men, have sex with a transsexual in the same way they’d have a go at any other kink – just to push their sexual boundaries and see if they enjoy an exotic experience. There are a lot of really horny guys out there, and some transsexuals look really hot. So obviously these horny guys are going to find them attractive, and some of them are going to be sexually confident enough to go one further. It tends to be intelligent, successful men who want to push their sexual boundaries a bit.”

Do we like T Girls because of the full-on sexuality? It’s said rather spiffily that they’re ‘just a man’s idea of what’s sexy in a woman’, which seems a little disingenuous considering that T Girls only take their cues from established female imagery and aesthetics, and so many real girls right now are going around in miniskirts, plunging necklines, fishnets and stiletto boots. “Obviously transsexual porn stars and working girls are going to look like that,” says Johanna. “Personally I pace around the house in trainers and no make-up.”

In his article It’s Just Mechanics published in political journal the New Statesman in January this year, semiotics expert Zaladin Sidduar condemned our “masturbatory culture” that was more about selfish sexual kicks than an intimate communication between genders that forms the basis of the miracle of reproduction. “When sex is just sex, without any context, what good does it do you?” he asks, and anyone who’s had a cold and empty one-night stand may sympathise. Is men’s sudden interest in transsexuals just a product of this ‘masturbatory culture’? Perhaps, but I’ve got to say that all the kinky things that I’ve either done for myself or investigated for this magazine have left me thinking, “That was fun but it wasn’t nearly the same as a top shag with my bird and I could quite easily live the rest of my life without doing it again.’

Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing, or enjoyable. As long as we can mentally separate our ‘masturbatory’ impulses and the kind of sex that really fulfills us, or even better, combine them in a relationship, then I think as much as Mr. Sidduar reminds us of the real beauty of intimate lovin’, it’s not like we need to sop indulging ourselves sexually in whatever way we want.

There are many people who’re even more militant than Mr. Sidearm. A Guardian Weekend article last year condemning the pornography explosion cited a liking for transsexuals as the most depraved act a ‘sex addict’ could sink to. Great to see the left-wing press being as enlightened and broadminded as ever. The ‘sex addict’ theory is that people with low self-esteem will feel compelled to undergo degrading acts.

“What the press calls ‘sex addiction’ is usually either obsessive-compulsive behaviour manifesting itself through sex or simply the product of a dysfunctional relationship,” says Boynton. “Stan Collymore (who’s also in Basic Instinct 2, funnily enough) gets caught ‘dogging’ and he has to tell the press he’s gone mental and he’s off to The Priory to sort it out.

“He may have cheated on his partner, but going dogging doesn’t make you a deviant. People want to victimize in the sense there has to be something ‘wrong’ behind it all. It has to be ‘You’re only doing this because you were abused’ or ‘you’re a pervert.’ Safe, sane and trans-sensual is the buzz phrase in sex research. As long as you’re not hurting anybody, what you get up to is perfectly healthy.”

And kinky sex, when enjoyed, obviously, is almost always cathartic. It’s mainstream society’s opinions which trouble us. I feel very lucky to have got compulsions like, well, shagging a transsexual out of my system and be able to make a living out of them rather than lugging guilty secrets around. But after being with Tanya I did feel it might have been a bit sordid and unnecessary. On reflection, I’ll admit to the unnecessary bit. But I don’t think enjoyable sex can ever be that sordid in the depressing sense.

So we’ve ruled latent homo tendencies, a freakish male idea of ‘what’s sexy’ and psychotic behaviour out of the debate on what men find attractive about transsexuals. The only decent reasons we’ve come up with are ‘they really suit porn’ and ‘it’s enjoyable and everyone has all sorts of tastes.’ Which leaves me a bit of space to come up with my own theory.

First, looking at male sexual trailblazers like Colin Farrell and Terry Richardson mucking about with T Girls with big grins on their faces, there seems a certain satisfaction in the act of admitting liking them. I think this is down to two things: one, a bit two fingers to the voyeuristic yet moralizing tabloid culture that screwed Steve McFadden over; and two, men ‘owning’ a fetish. The Second Sexual Revolution we’ve enjoyed in Britain and the US over the last few years has, commercially at least, been very much geared towards women. They have their pseudo-lesbianism, and sex toys in more weird and wonderful colours and shapes than there are Star Wars figures. Even wearing sexy designer lingerie is marketed as something women do for their own enjoyment – God forbid they could throw it on semi-regularly for their partner’s benefit. So, in reaction, here we are having a great time with transsexuals (who you’d have trouble getting out of stockings and suspenders). Girls – seeing as you started this slanging match – it seems we don’t actually need you either.

The second thing that’s occurred to me is that these T Girls, in person, are a great laugh. Many of them will have endured all kinds of pain prejudice in the course of becoming what they are. But considering this they seem remarkably happy. There’s something very rock and roll about defying everyone else to change your gender, then galavanting around nightclubs overdressed and oversexed. And maybe becoming an expensive prostitute to fund it all. Like some women keep a coterie of sycophantic gay friends, I rather fancy an entourage of hedonistic transsexuals.

Finally, I must address something else. Apart from being constantly asked if I was “gay, then?” the other question that came up when I canvassed opinion on this article was, “Do you ever expect to pull a girl again?” Well yes, because some girls (the ones worth knowing) are quite into it too. According to my rather-go-unnamed transsexual escort source, a lot of couples order T Girl prostitutes, and many of their websites specify this as a service.

“A lot of women like the scenario of being with a transsexual, including being penetrated by one,” says my she-male on the inside. Also, according to female porn director and feminist spokesperson Anna Span, “Many women do like the thought of their man being with another bloke, or at least their boyfriend performing oral sex on a penis.”

So if you’re not really up for doing it with another chap, maybe you can meet Ms Arena half-way. Well, 10 per cent of the distance judging by the gorgeous Gloria, the other 90 per cent of whom is all woman. There is indeed a third way.