Just to stick up for my brother Paul here, a man who repeatedly singled out women in his letters as valued co-laborers in gospel work, and who wrote the radical verse in Galatians 3:28 that there is no male or female in Christ…There is good historical documentation that the cultural context of 1 Timothy 2 in Ephesus makes those verses make a lot more sense. 1 Timothy was a letter written to help Timothy respond to pagan ideas that were affecting the faith and practice of the Christians in Ephesus.
Ephesus was the center of the worship of the goddess Artemis, who was presented as a huntress who stood for chastity and the rejection of marriage. Evidently in the Ephesian church, some false teachers were banning marriage because the local worship of Artemis elevated celibacy. Paul’s instructions to virgins in Ephesus are to get married, whereas in Corinth he encouraged them to remain single. Clearly his instructions about these things were responding to a specific cultural situation.
Artemis was the first-born twin (her brother was Apollo) and it was part of the belief system there that her first-born status gave her dominance over Apollo and by extension, gave females dominance and superiority over males. Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 2:12-14 should be taken as a polemic against the Artemis cult teaching, (a teaching that had women as it’s primary adherents and teachers) not as a statement about all women and men for all time. It was the women in the Ephesian church that were especially causing the problems.
Some have argued that many of the instructions to women in 1 Timothy are related to their cultic practices related to fear of childbirth. Artemis was the goddess of childbirth because according to Greek myth she watched her mother labor for nine days to birth her twin and had great empathy for laboring women. She was also believed to be sovereign over who lived and died in Ephesus. Women petitioned Artemis for safe deliveries by presenting her with expensive garments and jewelry which were also worn when praying to her for safe deliveries. Paul corrects these false ideas by instructing women to dress simply and trust God for safety through their childbirths.
All that to say, it’s not just Genesis that needs to be read in its cultural context. “Plain meaning” will lead you astray all the time.