Problem 1 with the cult view: these cults were not exclusively or predominantly female

Craig Keener (himself egalitarian) responds: 'It is not true that most of these cults were in actual practice limited to or even predominantly composed of women.' In the cult of Isis (a female deity), less than half the participants in Roman Athens were women. In the cult of the Asian mother goddess Cybele, the main ecstatics were castrated male priests called Galli. A female deity does not mean exclusively female followers. If Paul were forbidding ecstatic practices, he would need to forbid them for both genders.