It has become a maddening refrain, every time she drops a new policy proposal, grounded in a compelling vision for a more just and compassionate country. Thoughtful about race, gender, and class. With the details worked out and the new spending paid for in a fair and progressive way.

Yes, Elizabeth Warren has the best policies, but…

I’m done with the “but.” I’m endorsing Elizabeth Warren for president of the United States.

We all know what’s behind the hesitation: a bias toward male leadership.

I know this well, because it’s something I have personally benefited from at every turn in my career. At age 23, as a straight, white, young man — bright-eyed but without any evident qualifications — I got a great job as the executive director of a not-for-profit affordable housing group. When I ran for the New York City Council, in one of the most progressive communities in the country, I faced eight other candidates. All men.

I’ve tried to put my privilege to good use, as an ally in feminist, anti-racist, and LGBTQ efforts. But I can’t honestly say I’ve grappled seriously with the many ways, subtle and unsubtle, that this bias has benefitted me at every step: in my education, my career, in meetings, in fundraising, in the different expectations for my wife and I, in our domestic life — and most certainly in politics.

Thanks to leadership from the black community, we’ve started — just barely — to reckon with the legacy of white supremacy in the United States. But even with the strength of the #MeToo movement, we aren’t really doing that with gender. There’s little honest reckoning of the cost, or of the ongoing legacy of patriarchy, which is around us in every element of our economy, our health, our homes, and our politics. (It’s worth noting that black women, the most loyal Democratic constituency, bear the brunt of both.)

If you want an example of that legacy, just look at the Democratic primary.

As best I can tell, the argument that we should go with Biden, Bernie, Buttigieg, or Beto (rather than Warren, Harris, or Gillibrand) is that we live in a sexist country where women will struggle to be elected — and since the stakes are so high in the Trump era, we can’t risk it.

I understand why it feels scary to let go of our addiction to male leadership. Why it feels to some that the men are somehow “more presidential.” Why some pundits believe “electability” means someone who appears the least threatening to some of the white male voters that Trump won.

But let’s be clear about the costs of yielding to those feelings — and the victory we would be handing the misogynist in chief whether we beat him or not — by giving in before we even take up the fight. The answer to repression cannot be to accommodate it. The answer is to push forward for a more expansive and inclusive vision of freedom and equality.