In the Lord, not independent

After nine verses about head coverings and "the head of the woman is man," Paul stops. Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man comes through woman; and all things come from God.

1 Corinthians 11:11–12 is often overlooked because it sits inside the dense and contested head-covering passage. Having just argued a hierarchy of "heads" (verses 3–10), Paul immediately qualifies: plēn — "nevertheless," "however" — whatever that hierarchy is, in the Lord neither sex is independent of the other. Woman first came from man (the Genesis 2 point), but ever since, every man has come through a woman. Both sexes come from God. The verse is Paul's own corrective to any reading of his earlier lines that would make women derivative or subordinate.