1. Prejudice against femininity & homophobia

This one's pretty simple: they saw anything feminine as subservient and lesser, so having a man lie as a woman would be a huge challenge to the gender hierarchy the (elite, educated, wealthy, and male) scribes and rabbi who were deported to Babylon and wrote down the Torah. This was actually most likely 3 different Torah from 3 different traditions (Levite, Israeli, Judean) which were later combined and culled into 1 sometime during the late 1st Temple Period. That's relevant because it was only in the version from the elite Judean priests that we get these passages, and not the others.

So if they were trying to write down what they felt or understood these laws to be, and they wanted to clearly delineate men from women, and separate themselves from the (cruel, and hostile) polytheists who were trying to force them to assimilate and engage in their cultural practices (including open homosexuality and pederasty) it makes a lot of sense they'd want to ban their men from doing that. Especially since pederasty was a sign of status in Babylonian, Roman, and Greek culture and being a gay/bisexual top was a way to signal status as well.

So yeah, that's the historical context. Like I said it's only ONE of Hundreds of different reasons. The most popular is the one that is the most popular for all 613 commandments it's the law because Elohim required it to be Law and Law must be followed.

1. Prejudice against femininity & homophobia

This one's pretty simple: they saw anything feminine as subservient and lesser, so having a man lie as a woman would be a huge challenge to the gender hierarchy the (elite, educated, wealthy, and male) scribes and rabbi who were deported to Babylon and wrote down the Torah. This was actually most likely 3 different Torah from 3 different traditions (Levite, Israeli, Judean) which were later combined and culled into 1 sometime during the late 1st Temple Period. That's relevant because it was only in the version from the elite Judean priests that we get these passages, and not the others.

So if they were trying to write down what they felt or understood these laws to be, and they wanted to clearly delineate men from women, and separate themselves from the (cruel, and hostile) polytheists who were trying to force them to assimilate and engage in their cultural practices (including open homosexuality and pederasty) it makes a lot of sense they'd want to ban their men from doing that. Especially since pederasty was a sign of status in Babylonian, Roman, and Greek culture and being a gay/bisexual top was a way to signal status as well.

So yeah, that's the historical context. Like I said it's only ONE of Hundreds of different reasons. The most popular is the one that is the most popular for all 613 commandments it's the law because Elohim required it to be Law and Law must be followed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onah?wprov=sfla1

Specifically Ketubot 47b and Rashi Plus other traditions. I actually got it wrong; it was 7 days a week (every day but for Shabbat in cases where doing so would break Shabbat).

Just because we practice and understand our culture, religion, and history differently doesn't mean I don't respect our traditions. I even recognized that style of interpretation as a valid and common one in the first paragraph of my post. For me I try to respect and fully understand the history, time, language, and culture of our people; how those things influenced the development and changing understanding of the language of the Torah, and the understanding of how it was eventually written down and unified during exile. (an event which definitely happened historically even if it isn't recognized theologically)

I'd rather have a complete understanding of my culture and traditions, where they come from, how they have changed with time, and why. It doesn't mean I can't respect a purely theological understanding; I just want to understand and appreciate more than this.

As another example: I don't recognize "God" as a name of Elohim because it's a christianized and romanized word that descends from a totally different tradition. It's not wrong to do so, but I personally don't really like the way Roman and Christian culture has distorted some things in Judaism. It's not disrespectful to think otherwise, but I also do so because I respect the history of my culture.

If we stopped every discussion about Mitzvot amd Torah at "El said it..." then rabbinical tradition wouldn't fill thousands of volumes of debate and disagreement. We all accept these things to different degrees, even if we don't all agree on exactly what point to separate from that strict and blind interpretation.

I also like to acknowledge that our language has evolved over 5000 years and so even if the literal words have carried forward perfectly through that time people will read and understand them with their own ideas and biases based on their culture at the time they live. That's why we have Oral Torah after all: to be a record of all of those changes and variations in understanding. It's also why we value study, disagreement, and debate about Torah so much: we know we can't read it perfectly or understand it the same way over our entire history. It's mostly just differences in how different we feel things have moved in our understanding of the text.

I'm guessing you come from a fairly traditional Orthodox background, given your take on it. It's almost a Karaite take on Judaism; I'm curious (genuinely) how you understand other aspects of Mitzvot and Torah study in general; especially the integration of the Oral Torah, and the non-literal forms of reading (Sod, Remez, Derash). I'm also curious how you feel about laws that aren't Torah laws, but become traditions later that still create schisms between our community such as strictly matrilineal heritage: starting with the Hasmonean dynasty as a way to handle tax disputes, jurisdiction, land rights, and citizenship issues with Rome then evolving into a major point of contention between people and eventually becoming adhered to as strictly by some as the core Mitzvot.

Certain things specific to different cultural practices, carrying, travel, washing (please wash thoroughly down there), and the need to engage in study.