Feminism isn't dead.

I’m sure we’ve all heard someone say the era of feminism is over.

Some smug know-it-all — usually a man but too frequently a woman — will sit you down and explain feminism is over because feminism won.

Women are no longer limited to the kitchen; now they work in the market like everyone else. Women are no longer used as baby factories because they have unlimited access to abortion-on-demand.

Women are no longer sexually repressed because now they can hit the club and sleep with as many men as they want.

Ignoring for a moment that these are questionable summaries of what the feminist movement wanted, and wants, to attain, we should first address one simple fact: these are lies.

When someone tells you that men and women are now equal, they are lying to your face.

Women remain a subjugated class in America, and though they are perhaps better off than their grandmothers, they remain far from the promised land of perfect equality.

Let’s discuss the three points made by our holier-than-thou anti-feminist friend.

It’s true that there are now laws against job discrimination against women. You can’t fire someone simply for being a woman.

The courts have repeatedly ruled, however, that it’s perfectly legal to fire a woman for not being pretty enough, for acting too masculine or for failing to act like the office mother and prepare meals and parties for her male co-workers.

Women are now allowed in the workplace, but only on the condition they are present as women and not as equal co-workers. And we can’t forget women in the same jobs as men make significantly less money and are often denied promotions.

But women’s work doesn’t end in the office. When they get home, women continue to do the vast majority of housework, food preparation and child care — even women who are in ostensibly equal marriages with progressive men.

Tired from a long day at the office, men come home, drink a beer and watch television. Women, just as exhausted, come home to dirty dishes, crying children and a husband expecting a home-cooked meal.

Of course, women who don’t want families are just as attacked.

Every day conservative lawmakers from both parties are attacking abortion rights in this country. While Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, it hasn’t stopped anti-choice politicians from restricting abortion rights in dozens of states.

Women are forced to view ultrasounds or listen to false statistics about supposed links between abortion and cancer.

Even President Barack Obama has shown contempt for women’s control over their own bodies by prohibiting the sale of Plan B medication to minors.

But this shouldn’t surprise us, as we live in a culture where women’s control over their own bodies is considered a joke. More than a third of women are raped in their lifetimes, but the arrest rate for rape is less than a third of the arrest rate for murder.

Victims of rape are mocked, told they wouldn’t have been assaulted if they hadn’t been acting like sluts. Our society blames the victim, telling her to drink less or be more careful or dress more conservatively, ignoring the fact that it was a man who raped her.

This is not justice. This is not equality.

Women have made gains toward legal equality with men, though there are still massive gaps. They are far from being substantively equal.

Remember this the next time someone tells you feminism is dead.

­— atcrane@indiana.edu