Whatever you are, you are woman.
In the first look the meaning of the phrase seems clear, but it's hard to get. I wonder why the writer didn't say, "whatever you are, you are a woman.
Could you plaese help me to understand it's meaning?
The main text is here:
I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved the fiery pages of Mary Wollstonecraft, but there was a single line written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: βIt is a subject on which nothing final can be known.β The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations. Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of possibility, of a frontier being pushed outward. Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known. Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say: whatever you are, you are woman.