High-rankers, assemble! Wellcome to The Wellston Games

Chapter 3

Friday morning came and Remi was feeling a mix of excitement and nervousness. Today was an important day for the competition. Not one, but two games would take place.

Today, the war would officially begin.

And it began early. Remi sat on her bed, still in her pajamas as she clicked the icon on her phone that would redirect her to the Wellston Weekly website. She scrolled past the usual posts that she was currently not interested in (the weather, the menu of the cafeteria, Keene's petition to respect the curfews, etc) until she finally found what she was looking for: two articles written by anonymous authors, published on the same tab, side by side. Remi randomly decided to read the article on the left first:

"An unspoken hierarchy: what does it mean to be born a woman?"

"Cecile", Remi said to herself. "Obviously".

"'Tell me what your level is and I'll tell you who you are', that is a short but efficient way to describe a world that is ruled by power. In our world, one individual's luck is decided even before his birth: powerful parents give birth to powerful children;  children who will one day be aristocrats, politicians, Royals. The chances of becoming part of society's elite without being born in it are close to zero. You are either lucky, or you are scum. Powerless. Weak. A nobody.

What people don't seem to realize is that our hierarchy based on power is not the only factor that determines the life of an individual. In fact, the Low-Mid-Elite-High Tier segregations are subcategories of the actual main groups that rule society: male and female.

Being a man or a woman doesn't seem to make that big of a difference in our world. Actually, it is safe to say that a powerful woman is ensured the same successful future as a powerful man; and, at the same time, a weak woman is ensured the same future as a weak man. However, that does not mean that life is equally fair for both sexes, at least not when seen from a biological perspective. In this article I present a comparison between men and women's experiences navigating through society, with the objective to expose how the differences between the two seem to be particularly harmful towards women.

According to a study led by the University of Wellston (2015), men tend to be more physically capable; heavier, taller, stronger. Meanwhile, women tend to be shorter and thinner; more agile in most cases, but not as strong (page 35). It is important to note that these physical attributes could vary depending on each individual's physique and ability level (page 37), however, that does not change the fact that there are factors that represent a disadvantage exclusively for those born in a female body. Such as, for example, the huge influence that hormones (more specifically, the menstrual cycle) have on a woman's strength, energy and resistance throughout the month.

Due to the nature of each sex, men do not experience strong hormonal changes, nor do they deal with a period or with any of its symptoms like women do (page 36). This heavily implies that, unlike women's, men's physical capabilities remain constant through time. No matter when you pick up a fight with a man, there will not ever be any biological factors that could interfere with his performance during the fight.

The way male and female bodies work is taught in schools from a young age, which should mean that the disadvantages that women face are public knowledge and, therefore, taken into consideration in order to make women's lives easier. However, they are not. In schools, Elite-tier and High-tier girls are expected to fight at any given time of the month; bleeding, cramps, lack of energy or nausea have never been considered valid reasons to walk out of a fight, not even when those symptoms could easily affect the outcome of these fights. It is necessary to consider how harmful this could be for girls who belong to the upper ranks, and whose status, authority and Royal titles depend solely on their performance during battle.