What could topple the most stubborn roadblocks is a feminism and a politics that reorient themselves away from simple equality and toward happiness and pleasure.

“Because I can” is spectacularly freeing.

Conservatives saw welfare and poverty alleviation programs as undermining the nuclear family, allowing women—and black women in particular—to be government-dependent heads of households instead of husband-dependent domestic helpmeets.

No one has ever suggested it is her right to be happy. Instead, she hears she should be appreciative, and maybe a little bit sorry for availing herself of help.

What if, instead, the goal were happiness? Not at an individual level, with more yoga or self-care or Pinterest-perfect hobbies, but a political one: What would the world look like if our laws and policies prioritized feeling good?

The answer isn’t to simply try to be better at the limited tasks set before us. The answer is to ask, What would we make if we had all the tools? What do we want?

Our identities are too often defined by our relationships to other people—wife, mother, daughter—and prominent politicians defend women’s rights by describing us relationally to men.

Across the board, women are on a gerbil wheel, running to catch up—to their own expectations, to outside ideals, to men—and never quite making it.

This kind of happiness, of pleasure fulfillment and fulfillment of purpose, is missing for a great number of American women. That’s not because women don’t pleasure-seek or fail to find meaning in their lives; it’s because even though the concept of happiness is written into the founding document of the United States, it wasn’t meant for us.