To complicate the situation a bit further, your NIV version of Genesis 1:27 says that God created mankind in his own image, in his own image he created them, male and female he created them. Read as a whole, this verse clearly indicates that God had both male and female characteristics. Therefore, to suggest that one is superior to the other is to say that God’s nature had hierarchies within him. This is logically absurd. Beyond this, and which few scholars understand, the literary device used in this verse was called a merism. It is not a statement of two binary alternatives, rather it is setting the extreme boundaries of a whole range of possibilities. What is actually being said is that God created male and female at the extreme ends and a whole variety of other kinds of people in between. Today we would understand the concept of something being neither black nor white, but a shade of gray. A merism is much like this.

The Jewish scholars who wrote this section of Genesis also wrote the Talmud to instruct observant Jews on how it was to be interpreted and applied to their life. In the Talmud, they recognize eight genders. They are male and female and then there are androgynous and asexual. There are also people who were born male but become female at puberty and vice versa. Finally, there are two transgender types mentioned who are born male at birth but through human intervention become female and vice versa.

Beyond the obvious implications this has for the invalidity of the hatefulness of fundamentalists in the current culture wars over gender, more fundamentally it demonstrates that God’s nature does not give priority over to one sex or gender, whether male, female, nonbinary, gender fluid, or transgender. They are all treated equally . Accordingly to read the later pronouncements of Paul regarding the roles of males and females in a complementarianism type of way, indicates that they were more culturally oriented and not a mandate from God. You acknowledge this in noting that the prohibition against women preaching was not absolute, but dependent upon the context and place and time. We see evidence of this in other sections of the Bible, particularly throughout the Old Testament. Many of its standards regarding the relationships between men and women, especially in areas such as adultery and divorce, even the most conservative Christian would reject today. We have to be careful to differentiate between those things that God mandates and those things which men thought up to apply to their ancient cultures which have no eternal truth or relevance for today. Not all portions of the Bible are to be given equal weight or read in the same light. A more thoughtful approach is required.