For the source text click/tap here: Yevamot 83
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The Gemara describes a tumtum as someone whose gender cannot be determined. Under certain circumstances, the physical covering that hid the sexual organ may be removed (in the language of the Gemara it is nikra, or “torn” off) and the individual can be identified as male or female. Nevertheless, the likelihood that a man whose testicles have developed within his body will be able to have children is slim at best. This is certainly the case in someone who was truly a tumtum, that is to say that their sexual organs did not develop because of a low level of hormones. In such a case, even if the person’s physical situation improves, he will not be able to father children. (Steinzaltz)
During the last 40 years, Jewish legal discourse has confronted new uncertainties about the assignment of gender because surgery and hormonal treatments have made it increasingly possible to modify sex organs and sexual characteristics. Specifically, rabbinic authorities have rendered opinions about two kinds of people with atypical gender situations: transsexuals and people with intersex conditions. While intersex births are quite rare, they pose precisely the kind of rabbinic decision making needed.
We explore the syndrome of atypical (formerly ambiguous) genitalia and the cultural biases brought to the intersex conditions we encounter in modernity.