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In the movie Predestination, the John's biography explains that "she" was born a women but with two sets of genitals. Eventually, she had an operation that transitioned her into a man, though he still write under the pseudonym "Unmarried Mother".

Why was she born with both sets of organs? Does it have anything to do with the face that

she was intimate with her/himself to create the baby?

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    Huh, sounds like a rip-off of "All You Zonbies". Any particular reason why you think the "Unmarried Mother" would not have both sets of organs? What kind of organs would you expect a totally alien creature to have?
    – user14111
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 19:27
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    You may be right about the movie, I don't know anything about that. In the Heinlein story, the Unmarried Mother is its own mother and father, and so has no common ancestor with any other living thing; despite its human outward appearance, it is not as closely related to us as a dandelion, which does have a common ancestor.
    – user14111
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 19:33
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    @user14111 It's not a rip-off of "All You Zombies"; it's a film adaptation of that story.
    – Andres F.
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 20:20
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    Humans can, in fact, have both sets of organs as far as I know, though it's an extremely rare condition. I disagree with @user14111; I think the Unmarried Mother from Heinlein's story is in fact human; a human trapped in a time-travel paradox typical of SF stories, but still human :)
    – Andres F.
    Commented Nov 26, 2014 at 20:23
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    @user14111: more of an homage than a rip-off. Pretty decent movie, worth renting if you haven't seen it.
    – Joe L.
    Commented Dec 13, 2014 at 22:31

4 Answers 4

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In the film, the charity hospital doctor describes her condition as

"something very unique, one-of-kind, actually"

This being the case, we can reasonably assume that Jane's singular physiology results from severely mangled DNA which in turn results from

being her own father and mother. Since true human hermaphrodites don't exist outside of science fiction she must be suffering from an extreme form of the issues you would expect to see from incest and inbreeding.

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    No. The problem with incest and inbreeding is it increases the probability of recessive gene expression. If someone were their own mother and father, then you don't have multiple generations for the recessive genes to become prominent. Presumably in the time travel loop, the offspring is genetically the same every time. This is very unlikely, but that's the premise so you can't argue with in. Otherwise there's no genetic way to be your own parents in a stable time loop. TLDR: hump yourself as much as you want
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented Jan 30, 2015 at 20:19
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I haven't seen the movie, but assuming it follows after the well-known short story it is based on, Heinlein's All You Zombies, the answer is:

The story explores the concept of a single person being both mother and father to him/herself. In order to make this plausible, the story demands a protagonist capable of fertility in both the male and the female role (which therefore requires possession of both sets of sexual organs).

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  • "Because the plot requires it" seems a very poor answer.
    – Valorum
    Commented Nov 30, 2014 at 22:05
  • @Richard I would think it has to do with genetics more than anything. Yea, the plot requires answers doesn't really explain much, although i appreciate the effort
    – Huangism
    Commented Dec 8, 2014 at 13:33
  • I'm afraid that's one of these situations where it is really good answer.
    – Mithoron
    Commented Jan 30, 2015 at 14:13
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Summary : This is a bit of a cyclic dependency on Jane with John. The concept here is that if a child is born as a result of mating with oneself (one male self and the other female, but both with the same DNA), it results in a baby which is both male and female.

Here is a link that explains the timeline of the movie in an illustrative manner: http://digestivepyrotechnics.blogspot.com/2014/12/predestination-plot-explained.html

Hope that helps.

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  • Please summarize the relevant information from the provided link. Answers which depend heavily on links are discouraged since the information at the link may be changed or removed in the future.
    – Null ♦
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 6:40
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Because The Unmarried Mother's parents are both him- and herself, xe is essentially a clone of xyrself. So because xe has the condition, xyr clone / child suffers from the same. And that child being xyrself, that boils down to xe has the condition, because xe has the condition.

Xe appears human, but there's no way to tell. Xe came from xyrself, xe has no common ancestor with humans.

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