It’s easy to feel paralyzed and useless when it comes to the fight for equal rights for women. But 34-year old Melissa Stein is rising up against the patriarchy every single workday without fail by writing erotic fan fiction for exactly 23% of her time on the clock.
Sure, she might be physically sitting behind her desk at a small medical tech company in Denver, Colorado, but for a little under one-fourth of her day, her mind is on her newest story, in which Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc make love on top of an enormous, unrolled chocolate Yule log.
“I realized that the men at my firm were getting paid 23% more for the exact same job,” she explains. “At first as I was furious. But now I just spend the portion of my day that I’m technically not getting paid exploring what would have happened if Daenerys Targaryen gave up men and fucked her dragons.”
A number of different suggestions have been made about what the United States can do to close the gender wage gap. Some believe that fighting for worker policies at the state level is the way to go, while others believe that training women for STEM jobs while increasing minimum wage will help do the trick. But until those sweeping changes somehow take effect in the coming years and decades, Stein will be here quietly fighting the good fight alone by using one hour and 48 minutes of her day, not including her lunch break, to work on her GLOW BDSM orgy scene.
Coworkers have taken note of Stein’s new writing habits, but have noticed no discernible change in her work output.
“Yeah we all know what she’s doing,” says one coworker. “She shares her writing online. We all love it! Interestingly her work for our company hasn’t suffered at all, in face she’s still one of the most productive people that works here.”
Stein’s just happy to have found a meaningful way to protest a gross injustice in the world.
“When Trump was elected, I really asked myself what I as an individual can do to turn this crazy world around and secure the fair and equal treatment of women,” Stein explained. “I participated in some marches, wrote letters to my senators, but I still felt like I was getting screwed at work financially every single day. Now, I have fictional characters screw each other instead.”
In addition to her daily protest, Stein recently asked her boss for a raise – citing her male peer’s salaries in addition to her above average record on the job. She didn’t get the raise, but she did secure a few more hours each workday to devote to her reimagining of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which the women immediately kill all the men and go home.
Good work, Melissa!
