Sociopath Community

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so when we talk about things like human interference or medical transitions today with hormones or surgeries i think it’s important to point out that back in the talmud’s time they didn’t fucking have anything like that so the rabbis weren’t dealing with the idea of people changing their sex or gender through medicine or surgery they were talking about people whose bodies just didn’t fit into the normal male or female categories naturally like intersex people so when you ask about something like aylonit or saris would they fall under those terms if they had hormones or surgery or some shit i think maybe yeah but at the same time those terms were more about how a person’s body looked not about what procedures they went through or how they identified.

the rabbis were just trying to figure the fuck out how to deal with biological differences not with medical transitions. if there had been HRT or surgery back then maybe they would’ve considered it differently but the whole point of the terms was to categorize people based on what their bodies were like not what they were trying to do to change their bodies. so yeah, it’s a tough comparison because they didn’t have the same options and the terms were more about physical traits, not medical procedures.

if we’re talking about how those terms would apply today with some fucking things like HRT or surgery i guess you could try to fit it into those categories in a way but it wouldn’t be exact because those terms weren’t designed to describe gender identity or transitions they were just about how someone’s body didn’t fit the binary categories and how jewish law would handle that. so i guess i would say that if someone transitioned today, they might technically fall under those categories but not in the same way as the talmud used them.

as for the idea of "human interference" or changing someone’s physical traits with medical means, yeah, i can see how that shit might relate but it’s not quite the same shit as what the rabbis were dealing with since the people they were talking about weren’t going through intentional changes to their bodies. they were just people who were born with bodies that didn’t fit neatly into the male or female categories and they had to figure out how to categorize them within jewish law, especially when it came to marriage and inheritance.

so it’s not exactly about medical transition or fluidity in the way we think of it now, it’s more about dealing with biological variations that didn’t fit the male/female binary shit and how those differences affected someone’s role in religious law. if we were to apply today’s ideas about gender and medical transition to these terms, we’d be doing something that the rabbis never had to consider. the terminology in the talmud was for dealing with biological differences, not the modern understanding of gender fluidity or transitions.

so to sum it up, i think if they had had the medical technology shit we have now, maybe they would’ve used the terms for people who transitioned but it’s hard to say since back then they weren’t thinking about it in the same way. those terms were about physical traits and categorizing people based on those traits, not about medical procedures or identity politics stuff

also as for eunuchs, they were a whole separate thing that’s kind of related but not exactly the fucking same. eunuchs were treated as a distinct category of people, often viewed as non-gendered or in a liminal space, and jewish law had its own set of rules for them, especially when it came to marriage and priesthood. they might fit into this conversation too, since eunuchs were kinda like the extreme end of what happens when someone’s body doesn’t develop the typical male or female traits. they were seen as people who had undergone a permanent change to their fucking body (through castration or some other form of body alteration which would explain the human interference) and were treated differently in religious law because of it. it’s still not the same shit as medical transition today, but there is a bit of overlap in the sense that both eunuchs and trans people have bodies that deviate from the male/female binary, even if the causes and contexts are different.

so yeah, eunuchs might’ve been part of the rabbis’ thinking about gender and biological differences,  ( I think they fucking were) but again, it’s not the same as what we’re talking about now with intentional transitions and medical procedures. the rabbis didn’t have the option of considering someone who transitioned through surgery or hormones, so we’re dealing with a whole different set of issues. but in terms of how they dealt with biological differences, eunuchs and terms like saris and aylonit were all kind of ways to categorize people who didn’t fit the usual categories, even if the reasons and implications were different.