Yes, but the thing is: the dative isn't unclear, nor what it refers to...that's the thing; none of the Church ever thought it was unclear, either, till this text became un-PC by modern standards changing; and I do get what 1 Cor 11 says, but, however, notice that passage says nothing about a woman doing that in either mixed company, nor does it exhort her to be a spokesperson (prophet) to the Church, but merely refers that whenever she does either (again, indicates nothing about whether she should do so amongst the whole congregation), she is to have her head covered: this also wasn't even debated until this century!

Also, when handling a text, does the text itself indicate something cultural, or no? If you said yes in this case, you could make the same argument for practically any other part of the text: it's a loose argument that the text itself does not bear. If you want to make this kind of "how do we apply this cultural thing today", take a look about the prohibition of eating in idols' temples for the sake of others' consciences: there you go!

However this text in itself only demonstrates an apostles' own command, and of course the good 'ol rule could be applied here, scripture interprets scripture: you can check for the theme in scripture; and if we want to think "cultural" here, from the Judeo-Christian perspective of Paul's time, they disallowed all speaking (and even most participation) in Synagogues at the time, for which Paul is sometimes called a "radical" for saying "let the women learn..." but they forget the lat part "in silence...". (He's not trying to re-orient thinking on the sexes here, which idea has had much undue influence upon handling the biblical text in recent history. I think of one of the NRSV translators who protested the committee meddling with the translators' work after the fact to make it politically correct, though being himself very liberal in doctrinal and theological orientation, yet said it was dishonest to read such ideas into Paul's writing, as a committee, not the mass of translators, did to their work.)

Anyway, perhaps the dative confusion is over that it doesn't seem normal to we who speak english? The structure to an English speaker is odd, but it's not to greek, far as I know: I find that when I move in and out of thinking in Spanish, then look at the Greek...that some things don't seem so odd anymore, but that my own language was just getting in the way: though by no means am I advocating studying the language from the viewpoint of one or another modern language, but just that some things that may seem odd, even in your own language, and hard to understand, may really just be a form you're not familiar with.

And as I said before, I'm grateful that this makes me want to study hard, and thanks again. : )