In working on Bechoros 42, I had a question about Nidah 28a.
Rav says that if a Tumtum saw white or red, he is Safek Tamei. If he saw both, he is Vadai Tamei, and we burn Terumah due to this.
If he saw proper Zera or Zivah, is it still a Safek that he is a female?! Also Tosfos in Bechoros (42a) says that it is a Safek, and connotes that he is a regular male or female, just the genitals are covered.
Rashi in Nidah connotes that the white merely resembles Zera. I thought to explain as follows.
Even if we knew that he is a male (Beitzav b'Chutz), it is considered a weak Rov that it is Zera. This is not enough to burn Terumah, either because it is a weak Rov, or because he is a Safek female.
If we knew that he is a female, we would burn Terumah for blood, just like any woman, for whom we assume that blood came from the Makor.
Now that we are unsure, we have Rov Tzedadim to say that he is Tamei, and this suffices to burn Terumah.
I am unsure about this - Mefarshim should have explained this! (Also, they did not distinguish about red - if he regularly sees blood every month like a woman's Veses, I cannot fathom that this is called a Safek.)
Pesach Feldman, Yerushalayim
I think the Gemara in Yevamos 83b might help us here.
1) The Mishnah in Yevamos 81a cites Rebbi Yehudah who maintains that if a Tumtum is cut open and found to be male, he still may not perform Chalitzah because he is a "Saris" who can never bear children.
2) The Gemara in Yevamos 83b asks, how will Rebbi Yehudah explain the case of the Tumtum in Beri who was cut open and then gave birth to seven children? Rebbi Yehudah answered that in fact his children were not really his, and his wife must have conceived from another man, because it is never possible for a Tumtum to have children.
3) The Gemara then cites the opinion of Rebbi Yosi b'Rebbi Yehudah, who says that even if the Tumtum is cut open and found to be male, he still may not be capable of having children. The Rosh #9 concludes that we have to be stringent and say that even if the Tumtum is shown to possess male organs, we still say that he may not be capable of having children.
4) Based on this, I suggest the following: that the Halachah does take into account Rebbi Yehudah's view that even if the Tumtum's wife gave birth, we are still not confident that they are the Tumtum's children. We certainly say that even if he sees Zera, this does not proof that the Zera is capable of fertilization, and he still is a Safek female.
5) I suggest that it is possible that even if he sees blood every month, he still might be a Safek. Rebbi Yosi stated in Yevamos 83a that an Androginos is a "Biryah" in its own right. Tosfos (DH Biryah) writes that an Androginos is a Safek because it is a strange creature which possesses both masculine and feminine features and will always be a Safek. According to this, even if we discovered that the person who we believed to be a Tumtum was seeing blood every month, we still could say that it is an Androginos if it possesed both male and female aspects.
Kol Tuv,
Dovid Bloom