Equality Will Not Free Us

This talk, based on the book “Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom,” lays bare the problems of equality and proposes an alternative in freedom: the continuous process of self-creation and world-building based in accountability and care. Freedom feminism strives toward collective uplift and care by showing people how they can practice freedom daily, in their actions and their interactions with other people. This feminism is for everyone. Whereas equality feminism is predicated on the gender binary, which sets men and women in opposition to each other and subsequently villainizes men by centering them in the feminist project, freedom feminism argues that our freedoms are relational and conditional. That my freedom is inextricable from your freedom, and vice versa, means that to become free I must want the freedom of other people. The gender binary is irrelevant. In addition to outlining the ideas in “Breaking Free,” Bianco will discuss the importance of the dissemination of humanistic knowledge in the form of public writing, and why she chose to write and publish “Breaking Free” as a trade book, rather than as an academic one.