[Avodah] Transgendering and Halachah

[T613K at aol.com]

From: Micha Berger _micha at aishdas.org_ (mailto:micha at aishdas.org) 


RMB:  The  first teshuvah, the one I cited (vol 10, shaar 25, pereq 26, os 
6),
was a  hypothetical case of a transexual who wouldn't give a get. REW
pasqened none  was needed, the qiddushin had no man-woman couple on which
to be chal  anymore....You're describing a second teshuvah, written by a 
doctor who read  the
first one.




TK:    If it was a "hypothetical case" then it wasn't  actually a psak at 
all.  As for a teshuvah written by a doctor, that's not  a teshuvah written 
by R' Waldenberg.
 
RMB:  I'd be interested to see statistics that the reality  actually has 
changed
in a way that would make the first pesaq. As I said,  your assumptions
aren't enough for overturning a pesaq.... Particularly  when speaking about 
ruling out a safeiq piquach
nefesh.
 
TK:  According to what you and others have written, R'  Waldenberg's 
concern in his first article (can't call it "psak" because it  was hypothetical)  
was with finding ways to free an agunah.   There is no mention there of 
pikuach nefesh.  And the second psak had  to do with a specific case in which 
the person's organs were already  ambiguous.  Again I see no mention of 
suicide or pikuach  nefesh.
 
I would like to add that the TE's contention that, after the  fact, a 
surgically created female is halachically to be considered female  in no way 
suggests that such surgery is actually permitted.
 
I would like to know how he dealt with the following very  grave issues -- 
if indeed he ever discussed them at all:
 
1.  A person is not allowed to mutilate himself or others --  chabalah.
 
2.  In addition, there is a separate issur of castration and  surgically 
causing sterility.
 
3.  A man is not allowed to wear women's clothing.  In the  lead-up to 
surgery, a man is usually told to dress as a woman and try to behave  like a 
woman for a while, to get used to it.  
 
4. The prohibition of mishkav zachar is so grave that if there is even the  
slightest doubt that this "woman"  may in fact be a man -- he/she should  
not engage in such activity.  Of course he/she now only has the  ability to 
be the passive and not the active partner in M'Z.  I don't  know if that is 
less of a sin but I doubt it.  It also raises the question  of whether the 
man who sleeps with him/her is engaged in a terrible sin.   The surgically 
created woman may be involving not only "herself" but "her"  partner is a 
terrible aveirah.
 
I would like to add further that unless a male is castrated before  puberty 
(like the Italian opera castrati -- now thankfully outlawed), he  will 
continue to have secondary male characteristics after castration -- facial  
hair, body hair, a deep voice, male muscles and so on.  In addition to  surgery, 
this person who wants to be female must take female hormones for the  rest 
of his life, and even then most such "women" will always look like men in  
drag and will always elicit stares and doubting questions.
 
When REW wrote in 1971, it was not yet known that life-long hormone  
"therapy" would be required to keep a man looking somewhat female.  At that  time 
such surgery was exceedingly rare and there weren't men/women around who  
had been "surgically created women" for very long.
 
In practice these former-men always wear dresses and skirts, high heels,  
makeup and jewelry because -- unlike regular women who can wear pants and  
sneakers and can go without makeup -- these "women" look masculine and have  
to go out of their way to do things that make them appear more feminine.
 
There are so many terribly grave shailos involved that I can't believe any  
rav today would permit this type of sex change, except in the rare case of 
a  child born with abnormal, ambiguous genitals -- in which case it is not 
"gender  reassignment" surgery but "gender assignment" surgery.




--Toby Katz
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