The idea behind the twofold subjection is that God subjected the woman to the man from creation, and again after the fall. It makes no sense for us, and for a good reason; but it made sense for the person who created it, and also that was for a good reason.
A few years ago, when I was researching the subject of equality for my own sanity's sake, I stumbled over the twofold subjection of the woman to the man in Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. By this time, I had acquainted myself with early church theology and ancient Greek philosophy, and it was easy enough to see where Thomas borrowed more from Aristotle than he did from the Bible, which was, of course, only natural since Thomas's entire work is a synthesis of Aristotle's philosophy and medieval theology.
For Thomas a lot of things were twofold, but this particular twofoldedness was based on something other than good biblical hermeneutics; it was based on the ancient concept that men are the norm, and women the deviation from that norm. In other words, women couldn't be equal with men, because they weren't men. The lack of reason in women was a major tenet in Greek philosophy that was accustomed to making such statements without a whiff of proof.
However, Thomas could not have subjected the woman from creation, had Jerome not subjected her as a result of sin. You see, Jerome changed Genesis 3:16 in the Latin translation because he followed fourth-century theology more than the original Hebrew text. In the Latin Vulgate, we find "Under the man's authority will you be, and he shall rule over you," which is in accordance with the very Roman belief that God subjected the woman to the man as a result of Eve's sin; Adam was deemed innocent of the whole affair.
The Latin Vulgate was the only Bible available in the 13th century, wherefore Thomas Aquinas thought the woman was subjected to the man as a result of the fall. But he couldn't reconcile the idea of equality with Aristotle's concept of the woman being a misbegotten male, which negated all possibility of equality. As a result, Thomas sided with Aristotle and subjected the woman to the man from creation.
For more than 700 years, the church taught this belief that the woman was subjected to the man twice: both from creation, and a as a result of the fall. The first-mentioned was said to be a "good" subjection, the other a "bad" subjection, a servile kind in which the man uses the women as he pleases - with God's blessing. Since the twofold subjection was challenged in the 1970s, we now look either for a involuntary subjection from creation (by God), or an involuntary subjection as a result of sin (by man).
Which one is it?
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