Elena Ketra

She simply won’t comply. Someone on the other side of the wall of equality might reduce it to three short words: won’t comply! And who knows when she first got angry at the world. When was the first time something made her refuse to accept her assigned role? Perhaps the usual Barbie, or worse, the set of plastic pots with a plastic chicken and plastic fruit. “This is how you learn to cook,” they had smiled at her! “Up your chicken,” she had replied with a smile. Or when a schoolmate smiled at her beautifully and she felt fear. Because the rules of beauty are always set by someone else! Or when the whole universe started looking at her with suspicion because her belly didn’t swell. First suspicion. Then pity reserved for those unfit for service. Like those who stayed home. Far from a war. Unfit for service. Leftovers. They were honorably discharged. They had three wonderful children. Elena Ketra, who clenches her tiny fists as a child, simply wouldn’t comply.

And so imagine an alternative narrative where every woman can be. Anything. Except a sacrificial offering. There are no tears here. No victims. The theorem of female weakness does not exist. No compromises or negotiations. I am, full stop. And in history, literature, art, cinema, comics, science, and everywhere, among vast obvious fields already occupied by the “right” people, she discovers and studies the stories of those who simply weren’t allowed. The first ones who, at a certain point, threw the script away and said a different line—not the one assigned to them, but their own. First. Infinite stories, famous like that of Madame Curie or fantastic like Venus, the only female robot defending Earth from alien attacks!