the whole hermaphrodite thing was not necessary
it is impossible and it was just laughable, it was like those bad newspapers headlines: "man becomes his own mother and father". it was a waste of a good plot.
shareEr...hermaphrodites are entirely possible. They are, in fact, a real thing that happens to real humans.
As for 'necessary,' it certainly would have been easier to effect a sex change in the 1960s if they already had fully functional male genitalia to work with. I'm pretty sure they couldn't have made John fertile without them. So, yeah, in order for the plot to work, he had to be a hermaphrodite.
What I didn't get is, why did they elect to turn her into a male (taking advantage of the convenient hermaphrodite condition) in the first place? Women get hysterectomies all the time, it doesn't turn them into men or mean they can't pee, does it? It just means they can't have more children. Why wasn't the doctor just giving her the tough news they had to remove her womb and uterus and she can't have more kids?
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