Question

Dear Rabbi Michael, hello,
 
The Rabbi has noticed that I keep trying, tirelessly, to deal with difficult problems in society and in the Torah.
 
The main point in the email is in the large letters
 
The question of sex and gender is very significant today, and it comes up together with phenomena of sexuality that conflict with the body. Thus we are aware of the phenomenon of transgender people. And the halakhic problem of the question of someone who changed his bodily sex through surgery still stands: is such a person considered a man or a woman? Is someone who has sexual desire for a man and has a male body male or female? And what if emotionally he feels like a woman? I think the topic of the androgynus is very significant here, since it discusses sexual contradiction within the same person.
 
I am trying to offer an answer from Tiferet Yisrael, which relates to Magen Avraham and the Rif. One can understand from him that desire also participates in the definition of sex. And perhaps this opens a door to permitting relations between “two women in desire, each of whom has a male body” — that is, two androgyni.
 
Is it possible to discuss a homosexual as an androgynus, and thus permit anal intercourse according to those who permit intercourse through the female organ of an androgynus? (And the idea is that if it is permitted to have intercourse with him from the front through his female organ, then it is also permitted from behind.)
 
The notion that desire itself has a part in defining sex can be seen from the following:
 
Tiferet Yisrael — Boaz, tractate Shabbat chapter 19
(2) And Magen Avraham, sec. 589:2, wrote in the name of the Rif, that sometimes he is male and sometimes female. And I did not find this in the Rif. The thing itself is also far from human comprehension. How is it possible that his appearance changes like a chameleon, becoming at one time this way and at another that way? It is possible that Magen Avraham means that sometimes the male power within him prevails, and sometimes the female power, for since he has maleness and femaleness, his name reflects this as well: “andro” in Greek means man, and “gynos” woman. And recently the clever men wrote (in the Conversations Lexicon) that this does not exist at all. And I say that their mouths speak falsehood and their right hand is a right hand of deceit, to write a denial of something well known. My own eyes saw it, and not a stranger’s: about twelve years ago I myself circumcised such a child, who had a proper male organ, except that there was no opening at the tip of the organ; rather, from the place where the opening should have been there extended a protrusion of skin like a cord along the length of the organ down to the middle of the sac in which the testicles were, and between the two testicles there was a female opening as appropriate, and from there he urinated. And the organ would also become erect when touched. And about fifteen years ago a certain butcher brought before me a sheep to ask whether it was kosher, because it showed me male genitalia below like all rams, and female genitalia near the rear like ewes. As for a tumtum, the Tanna would not have needed to teach us that if before the skin covering the genitals was torn it is obviously forbidden, for perhaps when the skin is torn it will be found to be a female, and it would turn out that he desecrated the Sabbath; and if after it was torn, it is obvious that it is permitted from the outset to circumcise him on the Sabbath like any other male, even though he cannot reproduce.
 
True, he is writing about actual bodily organs, but perhaps that is only one of the options, or one indication that desire may also mean attraction to males; but the main definition here of an androgynus is according to desire. The fact that a homosexual is attracted to a man and has a male organ turns him into an androgynus.
 
And this fits, it seems to me, with Rabbi Feinstein’s idea that the Torah would not decree against nature.
 
Magen Avraham, section 589
“His own kind” — but not one who is not his own kind. (Talmud.) And the Rif explained that even though the other person is also an androgynus, if at that time when he is female, his fellow is male, he does not discharge his obligation for him:

 
And the Pri Megadim and Machatzit HaShekel also wonder where the Rif wrote this.
 
But that is because they could not imagine that this was a natural empirical assumption, and they needed an “a priori” definition from Jewish law itself, and that indeed was not found.
 
But in the Rif it is clear. How can it be that the androgynus has a sex such that he can discharge specifically his own kind, if the matter depends only on biology?
 
Rif on tractate Rosh Hashanah 7b
Gemara: The rabbis taught: all are obligated in the sounding of the shofar — priests, Levites, Israelites, converts, freed slaves, a tumtum, an androgynus, and one who is half slave and half free. An androgynus discharges the obligation for his own kind, but not for one who is not his own kind. A tumtum discharges neither his own kind nor one who is not his own kind. One who is half slave and half free discharges neither his own kind nor one who is not his own kind.

 
And Machatzit HaShekel has no answer for how to explain the Rif, and it seems to me neither does Pri Megadim:
 
Machatzit HaShekel, Orach Chayim 589:2
To exclude the possibility that the circumcision of an androgynus overrides the Sabbath [Shabbat 135a] — either way: if he was born at a time when he is female, that is obvious; and if then he is male, how do we know that later he will be female? end quote. And to this one can say that certainly at all times he is the same, in that maleness and femaleness are recognizable in him, except that sometimes the maleness is more recognizable and it appears that his essence is male, and after some time the femaleness is more recognizable and it appears that his essence is female. But I have not found this, and on the contrary, according to the little that I know, it seems from all the halakhic authorities that all androgyni are alike.
 
I would be happy to hear your opinion,
and thank you very much again for everything,