Hermaphrodites and Jewish Religious Duty

From Micah Gil at Killing the Buddha: the shofar and hermaphrodites in Talmudic literature:

There follows a most peculiar statement: “A hermaphrodite can perform a religious duty for a fellow hermaphrodite, but not for any one else.”

Some folks are shocked to find the rabbis even mentioning hermaphrodites, what the Gemara calls androgynus, but the truth is that this being of unusual gender shows up all over Talmudic discourse. Perhaps in the days before the “medical miracle,” when a procedure on the birthing table, a kind of grotesque circumcision, purports to solve this riddle of nature forever, the alternately-sexed were simply more present in everyday life. But what the rabbis lack in surgical technique, they make up for in the rigidity of their intellectual categorization. In every discussion, it is determined whether the androgynus will be treated as a man or a woman, depending on circumstance. Only one sage, the forward-thinking Rabbi Jose (pronounced Yo-si,) offers the suggestion that a hermaphrodite “is a creature unto itself.”