Series: Adulthood Is the Only ‘Hood That Matters
A teacher asked a room full of young men how they knew they were men. Every answer he got, he said the same thing: women can do that too. He was right. But he was also asking the wrong question.
I watched a video recently where a male teacher stood in front of a group of young men and asked them a simple question: “How do you know you are a man?” He went down the line, student by student. And every time a young man answered, the teacher said the same thing: women can do that. He was right. Women handle responsibility. Women show up. Women protect, provide, lead, and navigate crisis. Women do all of that and more. But the longer I sat with the video, the more I realized: the teacher was right about the wrong thing. He had identified the flaw in the answer without naming the flaw in the question itself.
The real question was never how do you know you are a man. The real question — the one that actually determines whether a person can build a life, sustain a household, and show up in relationship without causing harm — is this: How do you know you are an adult? That is the question that matters. Gender will not save you from your own immaturity. Maturity will. And we have spent generations confusing the two.
This probably feels obvious to me because of the house I was raised in. Long before androgyny became a cultural conversation, I was being formed in an androgynous household. I was the only girl, surrounded by brothers and male cousins, in a home where the rule was simple: if it needed to be done, somebody did it.
I took out the trash. I cut the grass. I cooked, sewed, cleaned, and fixed things. My mother did all of that. So did my father. So did my brothers. There was no “that’s women’s work” and “that’s men’s work.” There was only work, and people who were capable of doing it.
When I later encountered Sandra Bem’s research on psychological androgyny — the idea that the healthiest, most adaptable people cultivate the full range of human capacities rather than limiting themselves to what their gender permits — something in me recognized it immediately. That was the household I grew up in. We weren’t being raised into gender roles. We were being raised into competent human beings.
That formation shaped everything I’ve come to believe about what actually matters in a person’s development. And what I believe is this: adulthood first. Everything else is downstream from that.
I understand why people push back on this. The pushback comes from real places, and it deserves a real response.
Some communities and cultures have meaningful rites of passage that mark the transition into manhood or womanhood. Those traditions carry historical and spiritual weight, and I’m not dismissing them. But a rite of passage can bless your identity without replacing your maturity. The ceremony doesn’t develop the person. The person still has to do that work.
Some men, particularly in this cultural moment, feel genuinely lost and reach for the language of manhood because it feels like solid ground. I understand that impulse. But masculinity without maturity is performance, not foundation. Responsibility is what gives a person their footing — not a title.
Some faith communities have taught for generations that men lead and women follow, and they root that teaching in Scripture. But when you read the New Testament carefully and in context, a different picture emerges. Jesus modeled stewardship and mutuality. Paul’s letters, read whole rather than in selected fragments, teach interdependence, partnership, and love expressed through service. Leadership in the kingdom is grounded in character and calling, not in gender — and character is another word for adulthood.
I want to be transparent about where I stand, because it shapes everything I’ve said here. I’m an androgynous person in the psychological sense of the word. I believe we should cultivate the full range of human capacities in every person we’re responsible for forming — not limit them to the box their gender came with.
I believe deeply in partnership. But not the kind where one person carries the weight while the other holds the title. I believe in egalitarian partnership — not identical roles, not fifty-fifty down to the decimal, but shared contribution based on capacity, strength, and genuine willingness. Nobody checks out. Nobody gets carried. Nobody uses a gender script as a reason to stop growing. This is not a radical position. It’s a sustainable one. It’s how you build something that actually holds.
So if I were standing in front of that same room of young men, I wouldn’t ask how they knew they were men. And if I were standing in front of a room of young women, I wouldn’t ask how they knew they were women. I’d ask something harder and more important.
Can you take genuine responsibility for yourself — not blame-shifting, not minimizing, not waiting for someone else to handle what is yours to carry? Can you regulate what you feel without requiring the people around you to manage it for you? Can you tell the truth when it costs you something? Can you repair what you’ve broken? Can you contribute to a shared life without draining the person beside you?
Can you be an adult?
The question was never really about masculinity or femininity. It was always about adulthood.
Some questions worth carrying with you:
Manhood and womanhood are not the destination.
They never were.
Adulthood is the only ‘hood that has ever actually mattered.
