Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A hermaphrodite; an androgyne.
Etymologies
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Examples
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In this context the term androgynos, like kinaidos, indicates effeminacy, in that androgynoi are described as people who have “something of the shape of a man, but are feminine in all other respect” (Suetonius, Peri Blasphemion 61; Gleason 396).
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When a halakhic context requires decisiveness as to the gender identity of the doubly-sexed human or animal the default sex of the androgynos is the male (Levinson, 127).
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Much has been written about the midrashic androgyonos (Boyarin 1993, Aaron, Levinson, Wolfson 1994), particularly with respect to the midrashic reading of Genesis, its anthropomorphic theology and the origin of humanity as dually sexed, whereas the androgynos in halakhic discourse has not yet been much analyzed in scholarly literature.
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The semiotics of body surfaces produces other different and seemingly more ambiguous gender possibilities, the androgynos or person with both primary sexual organs, and the tumtum as one with neither, at least not recognizably (the Semitic root connotes “closedness”).
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These texts provide a definition of the androgynos in terms of a long list of gender-specific commandments that range from purity and priestly issues to marriage and inheritance laws.
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The tannaitic texts also record the minority opinion of Rabbi Yossi who insists that, just like the koi (Tosefta Bikkurim 2: 2) “an androgynos is a creature in his own right and the sages could not decide whether he is man or woman.”
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As a figure of thought the halakhic androgynos may appear to be the result of adding or subtracting the laws applying to men and women, based on his or her dual sex.
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This list of halakhot is ordered into four sets according to which the androgynos is similar either to the halakhic category of a man, or a woman, or to both men and women or to neither men nor women.
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Thus, the androgynos must dress like a man (Tosefta Bikkurim 2: 5, Mishnah Bikkurim 2: 2) but, most significantly, he may take a wife, but cannot be taken as a wife (Mishnah Yevamot 8: 6, Tosefta Bikkurim 2: 4/Mishnah Bikkurim 4: 2; Levinson, 127), just as he is subject to the laws of levirate marriage as a man but not as a woman.
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While this discussion indicates that the presence of a male organ is not necessarily entirely determinative of the maleness of the androgynos, since vaginal intercourse with him can be considered to be permissible, it also reveals the anxiety driving the halakhic consideration of marriage or sexual relations with an androgynos as being about potential male penetration (Satlow, 18; Boyarin 1995, 347).
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