Genesis 3 Does Not Prescribe Patriarchy

It takes a great deal of unintelligence to read Genesis 3:16 and mistake the curse of patriarchal leadership, something exists solely because of sin according to the third chapter of the Bible, for a positive, morally obligatory thing.  In the aftermath of the Fall, God told Eve that her husband would rule over her; history makes it clear that this curse, like many of the other curses, was not limited to the lifetime of Adam and Eve.  Despite the blatantly, inherently destructive and unjust components of patriarchal societies, some Christians today continue to confuse a descriptive pronouncement for a prescriptive one.

Patriarchal social customs (real or hypothetical), just like real or hypothetical matriarchal social customs, are perversions of God's intent for human societies.  According to Genesis 1:28-31, both men and women were commanded by God to steward the natural world, for both were charged to rule over "every living creature that moves on the ground," and yet Christians have tended to primarily encourage men to carry out these instructions, living out the curse of Genesis 3:16 instead.  God called the initial status of humanity "very good," and the initial status of humanity was free from the poisons of patriarchy (and matriarchy as well).

In the Edenic world, there was no gender-based hierarchy in the interpersonal relationships Adam and Eve shared with God and each other.  There was never a such a hierarchy in the relationships between God and humans even after the Fall, as if God values one gender above the other.  Unfortunately, the same is not true of some people: there has not only been a large amount of sexism inflicted on both genders throughout human history, but Christians have often been supportive of this horrid discrimination to varying extents.  Their endorsement of patriarchal cultures, and thus endorsement of the overt and subtle harms that men and women have suffered because of them, is a massive deviation from Scriptural doctrines.

A curse of sin that disrupts and impairs human relationships cannot be a prescriptive moral duty.  This is a logical impossibility--an evil predicted by Genesis 3:16's curse cannot be legitimately treated as something that should be carried out.  To say that a patriarchal society is God's will, a person must ignore or fallaciously interpret almost the entirety of Scripture, starting with the first three chapters of Genesis.  To read Genesis (and other books of the Bible) and judge the Bible to be complementarian, a person must practice heinous eisegesis.  That complementarians adopt a facade of deep concern for Biblical teachings, as opposed to constructs of tradition, is an ironic thing indeed.