Everyone except a handful of people appears to assume that the Biblical command to execute people for rape, adultery, kidnapping, sorcery, and more is ultimately a matter of personal preference even if Christianity is true. Of course, if God has a moral nature that does not change and this reflects that core moral nature (Malachi 3:6), then those obligations would not change with time or circumstance. Other passages, though, no matter if their ideas are thought to be good or evil, are often interpreted only through cultural or personal assumptions, though the popular stance would be at odds with the rest of the Bible or could only be assumed, are treated a core, immutable obligation for all people across history. Among these passages is 1 Timothy 2:11-14, which is famously regarded as endorsing conventional complementarian restrictions on women by saying a woman should not teach a man.
Yes, 1 Timothy 2:11-14 is the only Biblical passage that truly might appear sexist at first (though sexism is not directed just towards women, women happen to be the focus of these specific four verses), something that is not emphasized by nearly enough people. There are very blatant gender egalitarian teachings in the Bible as early as Genesis 1 and all throughout Mosaic Law and beyond. This portion of 1 Timothy 2 is actually an anomaly in that it, unlike practically all other Biblical verses, can actually seem at first like it is prescribing a lone gender-specific moral obligation. However, not only does the Old Testament, the part of the Bible mistaken by fools to be extremely misogynistic, already speak of divinely-approved female leaders of men (an example will be given below), but most people think 1 Timothy 2:11-14 addresses all women of all time even as they think the criminal justice of Mosaic Law is only a relativistic, time-sensitive preference of God. These people are such hypocrites! Deuteronomy 4:5-8 itself plainly says moral issues like killing for kidnapping or adultery is a prescription for all people, as it reflects God's unchanging nature.
If its commands from Paul were broadened to a universal level across all eras of time and geographical locations, then it would contradict what God himself had authorized before: women leading men even in such things as direct combat, as with Deborah in the book of Judges (and she was not chosen because men were unwilling to take her role; Judges 2 says God appointed the Judges). Paul is clearly egalitarian elsewhere, as he is in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 and Ephesians 5:20--not sexist against men while trying to masquerade as a gender egalitarian--so he would even be contradicting some of the other ideas he seems to affirm if he truly meant that women are morally prohibited from teaching men. Indeed, if 1 Timothy 2:11-14 or any other part of the Bible was sexist against either gender, this would very contradict the majority of the explicit teachings about gender elsewhere.
Egalitarians should have no problems recognizing that some women of course should not teach others, as the weaknesses and stupidity of individuals have nothing to do with their gender. Some women are irrationalistic and incompetent at being sound philosophers, and they have neither the right nor the ability to teach others, though many rationalistic truths are knowable without any sort of educational or conversational prompting to begin with. Some men are also irrationalistic and incompetent, having the same unworthiness or inability to accurately convey reality or even the tenets of unverified philosophies to others. In saying that certain women need are divinely prohibited from teaching theology and general philosophy (which theology is but a subcategory of at most), Paul's words do not even in an isolated context have to mean what so many have assumed.
Paul is not being sexist, but in addressing a particular group of women in a particular geographical place and era of time, he is instead being concerned with truth. How stupid must someone be to think that a letter of Paul, secondary to the Mosaic Law that even Jesus acknowledges as most central in Christian ethics, would contradict Mosaic Law, with its condemnation of adding to God's commands which do not exclude either women or men from positions of authority (Deuteronomy 4:2)? How stupid must someone be to think that utterly core parts of Christian morality like the specific criminal justice of the Torah would lose its righteousness as time passes but that an eventual Biblical letter to one church is the true cornerstone of Yahweh's moral nature? Then there is the logical fact that gender egalitarianism is true by logical necessity independent of whether God even has a moral nature or the Bible is true at all, no matter what personal biases or cultural stereotypes some people believe.
Logic, people. It is very fucking helpful.
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