“…sexual identity was for them not a hidden mystery to be disclosed by means of the science of physiognomy, but the product of a simple distinction between sexual organs”

Both the issue of eunuchs and of bodily defects suggest that categories of a “feminine man” and a “masculine woman” were foreign to the rabbis, and that sexual identity was for them not a hidden mystery to be disclosed by means of the science of physiognomy, but the product of a simple distinction between sexual organs. The whole project of defining levels of feminization based on a model of gender fluidity was foreign to their gender economy.

Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “The Rise and Fall of Rabbinic Masculinity”, Jewish Studies Internet Journal 12 (2013), 18.