How does the gemara address the fact of saying that an androgynous can only marry a woman based on the existence of male organs alone? If that androgynous person had female organs, breasts and no body hair like a woman, and said he was a female to marry a man, how would the mishna and gemara address this?

In addition, why is a tumtum allowed to marry whomever he wants, male or female, simply based on his inner preference, which is a category of decision-making not applied to the androgynous? One would presumably want to even check the tumtum surgically to know his organs. But even that could not alleviate the issue of how he feels about himself, in addition to having secondary characteristics such as breasts or facial hair (determined by hormones and not just organs).

Indeed, when reading about surgical treatment to remove extra organs from babies one seems to forget about asking that person himself what gender he/she feels he/she is.

Thanks.

Rebbe,

I had once asked someone why the Gemara and poskim are so replete with halachos of tumtum and androgonus when we so rarely see such people. (This was years ago). It was explained to me that in our days until recent times when a baby was born in either condition the doctors would operate at birth and thereby establish the baby's gender. It was deemed unacceptable and possibly cruel to allow a child to have both organs or undetermined organs.

In chazal's day that type of operation would usually have been mostly impossible and there would have been many more such children and adults.

Conditions may be returning to that of chazal's days since doctors do not want to be sued for malpractice by an adult who might insist that he would have chosen to be female or vise versa.

I have heard several shiurim about the halachic status of transgender people and it's becoming quite a shayach inyan. Rabbi Efraim Goldberg of Boca Raton gave an interesting shiur (YUTorah,com) about the frum fellow who was becoming a woman and wanted a psak on which side of the mechitza to sit on (Really!)

B'kavod,

Sam Kosofsky

Thanks for your reply. Why wouldn't it be automatically required to assess the androginos based on all his characteristics including HOW he feels about himself. It seems to me that if such a person had the characteristics of breasts, voice, organs of a woman and happened to have the male organ as well, and felt he was female, then marriage to a man would could not be forbidden even under the assumption that any biah would be classified as mishkav zachor and forbidden.

About the tumtum the gemara said that a tumtum may marry either a man or a woman. Based on your description, how could he be told he cannot marry anyone at all simply because he was a tumtum, regardless of how he felt inside about himself?

Finally, it is the Tsits Eliezer and other sources who talk about surgery to change the baby to male or female depending on the circumstances, but this too would be wrong since the subjective feelings of the person are totally ignored.

This encompasses the dilemmas of modern society and the whole issue of stigmatizing and ostracizing the transgender person who is absolutely convinced inside that he/she is of the other gender (and often contemplates suicide) and suffers because of this.

Thank you for this exchange. . Of course we know that for example if a person had cancer it would be clear that removing an organ would be permitted as a remedy.. In the case of these people many times they are on the verge of suicide because of the confusion.

On the other hand, many of them choose not to do surgery and see no necessary link between the anatomy and identification.

Regarding the issue of marriage, as kinyan kiddushin, if the male organs existed together with female ones, plus female secondary characteristics, and the person claimed to be a woman, it would be hard to understand how they would not be allowed to marry a man, since marrying a woman would be like a same sex marriage.....

I still don't understand why the gemara itself did not even address the issue of the existence of characteristics other then the male organs altogether or the subjective feelings of the person....