Some translations of the Bible, such as the King James Version (KJV), use masculine pronouns like "he" or "him" in moral prescriptions when they are really talking about/addressing things applicable to either men or women. Actually, passages in Mosaic Law like Exodus 21:20-21, 26-27, Leviticus 13:29-39, 25:44-46, Numbers 5:1-7, 6:1-21, Deuteronomy 13:6-10, 15:12-17, 17:2-7, and 29:18-20 all clarify explicitly at first that they are referring to male and female people, often as the perpetrator of a given sin or its victim, and then default to masculine pronouns for all parties involved afterward. Obviously, even as an older, more conservative translation much less likely to reflect genuine gender neutrality already in the original language (at least in meaning), the King James Bible gives example after example of cases in Mosaic Law itself where it is not, for instance, saying that only male or only female servants are to be freed if abused (Exodus 21:26-27), though the pronouns tend to be as if for men. Some people severely misinterpret Biblical statements in reaction due to their own false assumptions about gender or what they have been told about historical Christian interpretation. Beyond doing the same with basic necessary truths of reason that are not denied by the Bible even in the King James, they must distort or neglect whatever the Bible nonetheless does or does not say which is contrary to their stances on what it proclaims.
Of course, it is not as if even such statements as that of Exodus 21:12-14 in the King James Version would only apply to men irrespective of its blatant, repeated tendency to use male language for women it just mentioned. While the language, in a purely literal sense, would seem to speak of how an adult human male who murders another adult human male should be executed, the Bible never says something such as "A man who murders another shall be put to death, but not a woman who murders", or "A man shall not murder a man, but he may murder a woman". While mistranslations of gender neutral pronouns can certainly make the Bible very superficially seem to be misogynistic in its philosophy with some things, it also makes the Bible seem to be very distinctively misandrist, or sexist against men. For instance, Deuteronomy 17:12 would then, according to this flawed interpretation/approach, teach that only a man who opposes a judge or priest of Yahweh is to be killed, not a woman who does the exact same thing that any person who can speak is capable of doing if they wished. Deuteronomy 21:18-21 would then hold that a son who engages in the specified form of disobedience to parents should die, but not a daughter who does the exact same thing (and there are worse ramifications than this).
It is just that many people are hyper-fixated on whether passages that are plainly not sexist against women in context (like Ephesians 5:21-22, even in the wording of the King James) to the point of seemingly not caring about how, on their misinterpretations of the Bible, it would follow that Christianity discriminates against men just as much or moreso than they think it does towards women (and it does not). This reinforces still other misperceptions and beliefs on outright errors, not that a person cannot avoid assumptions and recognize various truths about the matter regardless by looking to reason, that lead them to the interpret passages like Deuteronomy 20:10-15 [1] in sexist ways, and here I particularly mean sexist against men. For aforementioned passages like Exodus 21:12-14, which deals with murder and its prescribed punishment of death, though it might erroneously seem to teach that murdering a woman is permissible (if the literal pronoun wording is as vital as so many pretend in other passages), it would also seem to say that women murdering men is not as serious as a man sinning in this way by not mentioning specifically female perpetrators in the case law as well.
With the subject of murder, almost no one would be stupid enough to think that the Bible literally teaches that it is a sin for men to murder, but not for women to murder men. Perhaps they think of Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17, which say in various translations, without mentioning gender one way or another, "You shall not murder," "Do not murder," or, in the KJV, "Thou shalt not kill" (as in murder). Here, they might be more willing than in other cases to admit the logical equivalence in itself, independent of direct mention of it in the Bible, of murder committed by or against men or women, as well as how the two both bearing God's image (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2) would mean there is no difference concerning the depravity of murder, no matter the gender of the murderer or the victim. They do not tend to approach certain other verses like this (like Deuteronomy 22:25-27, which addresses a very specific kind of rape and yet outright says the act itself is like an instance of murder), so they are hypocrites, since there is not anything in the direct wording, the broader context, or the strictly logical necessities true of all concepts that requires many other ideas supposedly taught in the Bible. Among these which are ultimately foreign or rejected by the text would be that rape is only committed by men, or that the rape of men by women is of lesser severity morally and psychologically.
In part two, I will specify additional reasons why the gender-specific interpretations of statements like the KJV's version of Exodus 21:12-14, save for those about things like circumcision of male babies or menstruation, could only be assumed and, more than this, false whether or not the Bible is true. I will also tackle the ramifications one way or another for issues like physical and sexual assaults not involving murder. Look past the fact that if Christianity as put forth in the Bible is true, it must be consistent with logically necessary truths, such as how a man and woman who commit or are victimized by the same act are logically equivalent, so an action that can be committed by both genders, if morality exists at all, cannot be good or evil for just one of them. Similarly, look past the fact that Genesis 1:26-27 and 5:1-2 make it clear that the Biblical position is that men and women are equal before God metaphysically, both bearing his image. Look past how the Bible makes no statements about an act being truly sinful for just one gender of the nonexistent kind for murder discussed above (compare Exodus 21:1-11 with Deuteronomy 15:12-17, Numbers 30:1-16 with Deuteronomy 23:21-23, or Exodus 22:18 with Deuteronomy 18:9-11 for three examples of how a statement mentioning one gender or the other is clarified later on, though there are reasons why the sexist interpretation does not follow from the initial text in each). Whether it gives case laws specifying a male aggressor and female victims (as with Deuteronomy 22:25-27) or uses purely masculine language all the way through a passage in the KJV, the Bible mentions many kinds of physical and sexual assaults in Mosaic Law, yet these are absolutely never presented in a misandrist or misogynistic way. This is of no minor importance.
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