GEN129 Although [this verse] could be read to mean that God created humankind to be both male and female from the beginning, the Rabbis, reading the number and gender of the nouns and pronouns literally, suggest that God first created one person who was androgynous.  The second chapter of Genesis, however, asserts that God first created a male human being from the dust, and then created a female from the man’s side in order to be his helpmate.  This second account, and the Garden of Eden story that follow in chapter three, assert that man is first in the order of Creation and is designed/meant to reign over woman.  So even the opening chapters of Genesis give us conflicting understandings of human gender and of the proper relationship.  DORFFBOD xiv-xv