This is an odd direction to take it. The entire thread of conversation has been premised around the unspoken law of 'you are an adult when you feel like an adult', and we debate under what conditions that feeling will truly settle in.

Since its self determined, someone can be quadriplegic, and feel like an adult; then they'd explain to us why they do.

It's not up to us to determine if they are.

Someone could be in the same situation and feel infantilized by the fact they can't feed themselves, despite being successful in every other aspect of their life. We could try to tell them they're still an adult, but in the end... we can't force the sensation of adulthood on them. No one can.

The person you are responding to was speaking about themselves, in their own feeling as a woman. Perhaps some women would feel utterly different, but that's no reason to take offense. I personally think the original posting of 'being an adult means you are the only person responsible for you' is western-culturally dependent.

In my culture, people will hound you about your behaviors till the end of time so long as you share a last name or a bloodline with them because as far as they are concerned family is responsible for everyone, always. Thus independence has nothing to do with adulthood. Adulthood, is rather the capacity to give more to the family than you take away from it.

I truly don't know, I've never met a person who is dependent on others due to medical issues, so I wasn't referring to them.

I bet most people would consider stephen hawking an adult.

I bet that too. He has a world-class career, made a fortune, had several wives and multiple children. He hit every "adulthood" milestone western society ever came up with.

He achieved all those things before his illness though.

He had financial independence, status, and a career before he became paralysed.

This means he could pay for his own nursing, and that's exactly why people see him as an adult.

Here's the thing: what people are calling "adult" is nothing other than the traditional definition of "man"

A "man" is a person who is independent, powerful, free, makes his own decisions, pays his own way, has others depend on him, etc.

What's interesting is that you have clearly indicated that, despite being female, you feel like a man! Meanwhile there are many males who do not.

I think it's a very interesting discussion. Too bad my bringing up the housewife/paraplegic angle got me 18 downvotes and counting.

For what it's worth I didn't downvote any of your other comments but I did this one, despite this being the most substantive one in this thread. It feels like you're trying to pick a fight rather than have a useful discussion in the other comments, and in this one pull out a bizarre tangent into the definition of a "man".

Maybe internally you and I and the other commenters all feel the same about equality but with different vocabulary, but the language and framing used here seems likely to have a divisive effect. Rather than letting all of these downvotes cause discouragement participating, hopefully they can help to converge on a useful, non-divisive approach to actually sharing information instead of sticking to what may come across as inflammatory.

I have a philosophy degree. I don't feel discouraged, I feel embarrassed that my software colleagues are so thin-skinned and pedestrian.

What you're calling "bizarre" is some entry level philosophy of gender, bro.

And some would say philosophy of gender has gone pretty far off the rails compared to the discourse used by the rest of society.

These are all good/interesting points. I'm not sure what I think about them right now, It'll take a while to digest.

Thanks again, you really gave me something interesting things to think about.

I think that's actually a very good question. Intuitively I'd say no, people with clear medical issues and resulting dependency are adults.

But on the other hand, I'm much more inclined to consider that people with psychological issues and resulting dependencies are not always adults. It's purely a feeling, by the way. I can't quite justify it.

I think the crucial part is visibility and understanding. If we can understand the mechanism, or see the disability, it's easier to accept that it's not a choice, and that they do the best they can within their limits. They are as independent as they can be, and really, aren't we all quite dependent in the end? I mean, if society were to collapse I'd probably die pretty quickly as I have no clue how to survive in any kind of 'nature'.

But then, as a disability become less visible, or harder to understand, we have a tendency to not be so lenient.

So at some point on the spectrum we might have Lupus, which (afaik) is understood but not visible. We might sometimes get frustrated at the limitations of someone suffering from this, but we still see them as adults (http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christ...).

Then there's ME, which has for a long time been treated as a psychosomatic issue. It wasn't/isn't well understood and the symptoms appear somewhat randomly and seem to be just 'tiredness'. A family member of mine had this and sometimes I noticed it was difficult for us, the family members, to sympathize and not feel like she was a bit whiny and childish.

And then we have something like depression, personality disorders, or developmental disorders, which very often causes intense frustration, or anger in the surrounding people. I know a few people suffering from ADD, autism, and bipolar disorder, and they get very little sympathy.