What is a woman?

And the room folds in on itself.

Eyes dart, throats clear, truth hides behind polite confusion.

Some say:

“She is not her womb.”

“She is not her chromosomes.”

“She is not her ability to mother, or bleed, or soften the sharp edges of a world built by men.”

So if a woman is not these,

then what is she?

We are told—

She is whoever says she is.

She is a claim.

A costume.

A story.

A vibe.

But language is not a mood.

It requires edges.

Definitions.

Limits.

So let’s ask it differently.

What is not a woman?

What stands across from her in the mirror of meaning?

A man, maybe.

An unbent tree, rooted in the word “no.”

Broad shoulders taught never to cry.

Voice two octaves deeper, expectations five bricks higher.

A history of conquest. A suit. A war. A wage.

Not a woman is

an origin not shaped to receive.

A body that was told from birth to act, not become.

A life rarely interrupted by the need to shrink or justify.

A default setting.

And so,

if one leaves that identity—

lays down the sword,

undoes the collar,

steps out of the assumption—

do they arrive at “woman”?

Or do they arrive at not-man?

Because these are not the same.

Not a woman is

not simply what you take off,

but what you step into—

what wraps itself around your bones when no one’s looking.

Not a woman is

not a slur, not a judgment—

but a boundary. A map. A line that tells us where language still holds shape.

If we can no longer say what a woman is,

perhaps we must begin

by remembering what she is not.

Not a man.

Not a metaphor.

Not a maybe.

Not a blank page where anything goes.

A woman may be many things.

But she is not nothing.

And if she is not nothing—

then she must be something.

Let us start there.