In Yud Gimel (13), in the last Mishnah, we said that if a person is a mamzer (halachically illegitimate person), his status continues to his children. He continues to pass it on. In this Mishnah, we’ll talk about whether there is a way to stop that mamzerut (mamzer status) from passing from one generation to the next. The Mishnah says that Rabbi Tarfon says there’s a way to purify mamzerim, so that the child of a mamzer could be an ordinary, regular Jew. How does he do this? If a male mamzer marries a female slave, a female Kena'ani (Canaanite) slave, and this is even, and they have a child, that child is a slave, not a mamzer. The child of a female slave takes on the status of its mother, so even though the father was a mamzer, the child isn’t influenced whatsoever by its father. It follows its mother, and it’s now a Kena'ani slave.
Once the master frees that child, the child is now a free man. When a slave is freed, he is turned into a fully converted Jew, and all of the halachot (halachic laws) apply to him. So now, even though his father was a mamzer, this child is now a full-on Jew who could marry into the Jewish people. According to no, you don’t say that he becomes a regular Jew with no mamzerut; he becomes both. He becomes an eved (slave), and he becomes a mamzer. According to him, if a mamzer marries a Kena'ani slave and they have a child, that child is both a slave taking after its mother and a mamzer taking after its father. It takes on both of them. According to Rabbi Eliezer, he learns from the Torah that mamzerut passes on to a child no matter who they marry, no matter what.
But the Machloket (dispute) here only applies if a male mamzer marries a Shifchah Kena'ani (maidservant). That’s the only situation. But if we’re talking about a situation where you have a female mamzeret and she wants to try and figure out a way to not have this mamzerut pass on to her children, it’s impossible, because even if she marries a Kena'ani male slave, her child follows the status of the mother. The mother is a mamzeret over there, so therefore the child is going to be a mamzer, and it would not have the status of the father, who would be a slave. So there’s only a Machloket when it comes to a male mamzer marrying a Shifchah Kena'ani.