The next steps for progressives are obvious:

First, give up the ghost of equality.

EQUALITY WILL NOT FREE US. And policy, judicial, and cultural trends have proven how equality has served as an adept cudgel of conservatives, from overturning affirmative action based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to asserting that “equality begins in the womb” to argue for the notion of “fetal personhood”—an oxymoron that’s like me referring to all of you as “undead corpses.” But that’s how the logic of equality works: by performatively eliminating difference, real differences—in this example, the differences of time that constitute legal personhood and sociality—to create an illusion that we are all the same, and therefore we all want and need the same thing. (The same thing that Daddy will give us.)

Tethered to equality, feminists remain stuck in the same discursive frameworks, endlessly recycling the same talking points about the same issues battled by our mothers and our mothers’ mothers. (And, eg, continuing the infuriating “pro-life/pro-choice” binary framework will not work in our favor to secure reproductive freedom for all.)

Second, center freedom to reclaim essential cultural and political narratives.

Post-election and on the precipice of a new onslaught of attacks via Project 2025, it is well past time for feminists (and progressives) to change the narrative. In “Breaking Free,” I propose a new set of ideas, language, and frameworks to break free of equality, which is based on the logic of whiteness and the bad faith gender binary.

Unlike equality, we do not need to wait “300 years” for men or patriarchal institutions to hand freedom to us. Freedom is not given; it is claimed through its activation and practice. Freedom is the tool we need to revitalize feminism and cultivate more dignified, caring, and joyful lives. It can usher us beyond superficial visibility and representation, false equivalences, and the harmful expansion and replication of systems of oppression.

I define freedom as an ongoing process of self-creation and world-building rooted in accountability and care. Freedom practices are those that foster our authenticity and honor the dignity of all people. They demand the recognition of our mutual coexistence.

If equality anchors our dignity, our bodily autonomy, and our rights to the patriarchy, then freedom liberates them from it. Equality feminism has us seeing the (glass) ceiling as the limit. But if we stepped outside the house, we’d see the entire sky.