Female liberation is
dead and buried. The era lasted only
fifty years if you count the lead up but its end came swiftly. The final straw, so far as Man was concerned
was when Woman tried to assert total dominance over him. It nearly worked, too. One more step and males would have been disenfranchised, their openings in the world severely
limited and then reduced as virtual slaves to womankind.
It didn’t take much. Certain leaders amongst the males met
secretly and planned things carefully.
The word spread—again with the utmost secrecy—and suddenly the tables
were turned. Males, very scared now that
they had come so close to disaster, assumed control once more.
Retribution was swift—and harsh. Women’s rights were totally removed. Once more females became virtually the
property of their fathers, and later their husbands, both of whom were not only
permitted to exercise disciplinary control over them—it was demanded. Women once more became the responsibility
of the men who controlled them. No more
were women going to be permitted to assume anything like an equal place in
society.
Ornaments, workers, mothers … yes,
under certain conditions ... But as to
having a say, certainly not!
Oh they tried to resist, of
course. Arguments raged over the media
as to ‘equal rights’ but these were countered by men who claimed, not without
some truth, that woman had tried to assume a vastly more than equal share of
authority. When the new laws had been
enacted restricting women’s entry to the professions and to certain classes of
employment and requiring that they first and foremost attend to their duties at
home, many had rebelled. It was then
that the penal clauses had been strengthened, men recognising that a few sharp
lessons were needed to establish, once and for all, that women were now once
more subservient to men and that was the way it was going to be from now on.
Angela Martin stood
in the dock in the Women’s Court. It was
merely a square platform, some four feet each side and raised three feet above
the floor of the court. Steps led up to
it from the back. At the centre of the
back edge was a metre high steel post.
Her wrists were manacled behind her back to cuffs welded to the top of
this post as they had been for the whole trial.
She was naked now and had been from the moment the all-male jury
pronounced her guilty. Mr Justice Rowbottom had said the fateful words: “Strip the prisoner naked for sentence…”
The bailiff had nodded, stepped up
onto the platform and then proceeded to tear the clothes from her slender young
body. He had first ripped open her silk
blouse and torn it from her upper body, leaving her breasts covered only with
her bra. Then he had undone her
wrap-around skirt and flicked it off. Beneath it she had on panties and stockings. He squatted down and took off her shoes then
pulled the stockings down and off her feet.
The audience, all male of course,
since it was considered women should be home and working at their domestic
duties, watched with bated breath. None
objected. It was well past time these
women, who had become most supercilious as they had achieved more and more
power in the land, were brought back down to a proper level and, as the
government had explained, shame and humiliation were potent weapons to achieve
this aim.
The bailiff grinned at the men staring
up at the near-nude prisoner and moved to her side. He didn’t bother undoing her bra but took out
his pen-knife and simply cut the band. It
fell to the floor, exposing her creamy-smooth breasts to all and sundry.
Angela stood there in utter
misery. She had never been a wanton girl
and had never exposed herself to men except in the privacy of her bedroom. Her face blushed a
deep red and she moaned softly as the bailiff so brutally stripped her of her
clothes.
But he wasn’t finished yet. He moved to her side again and inserted the
blade of his knife into the waistband of her panties, sharp side out. It took one slash and the elastic parted. The silk material wafted down, exposing her
neatly trimmed sex, to hang by the elastic bands on her legs. A couple more quick slashes and the now
useless garment floated down to join the other pile of rags on the floor at her
feet.
She was now stark naked and every pair
of eyes in the court was upon her flesh, drinking in the slender but
beautifully shaped body; the velvet-smooth, creamy skin and the firm
muscles. Her breasts were not huge but
they were full enough and perfectly formed with small pink nipples in the
centre of the slightly larger areoles surrounding them.
Her thighs were shapely and muscular
as were her arms. Her whole body
reflected her love of athletics.
Judge Rowbottom
left her in her shame for a few minutes.
Hell, he was as enamoured of her body as everyone else in his
court. But then he cleared his throat
and looked down on her sternly. “Angela
Martin, you have very properly been found guilty of the heinous crime of
Incitement to Rebellion. Your plea that
you were only joking was treated by the jury with the contempt it deserved … Your further
argument that you are young and that your youth is somehow an excuse, is also
rejected out of hand. Even a nineteen
year old is expected to know the law …”
He paused a moment as Angela looked up
at him in bewilderment. She had only
said to Jean, her co-worker at the library, that it was a pity they could go no
further, now being at the top of the promotional tree permitted for women. Surely that wasn’t a crime. Alas, it was.
“You females need to be taught a
severe lesson. We will not permit a
return to the lawless days when you thought you could do anything you liked
under the guise of ‘equal opportunity’ and ‘sexual harassment’. Well, thankfully, those days are now gone and
you females are back where you belong, under our control.” He paused again, his eyes raking up and down
her nude form. “Angela Rowbottom, it is the sentence of this court that you serve
as a municipal labourer for the period of one year.”
He banged his gavel and rose, bowed to
the court and left the room.
All eyes were on the prisoner
though. She had started to cry, her body
shaking in anticipation of the terrible year to come. Her parents and sister looked up at her in
anguish. Oh why had she been so silly as
to joke about such a thing? They went up and held her hand while the bailiff
undid her manacles and the court usher gathered up what remained of her
clothing to go in the rag-bag. She would
not be needing it where she was going, even if it had
been fit to wear.
She was conveyed to the municipal
labourers’ pens, there to be processed.
They didn’t give her anything to cover her nakedness. She was taken out, under guard, to the yard
at the back of the courthouse and pushed up into the paddy-wagon. This had no seats. Indeed, it was merely a metal box bolted onto
the frame of a utility truck. The box
was made of steel mesh and you could see inside quite easily. There were three others under sentence of
municipal slavery for varying periods and the four of them huddled on the bare
metal floor, horribly ashamed at their nudity and that when the vehicle pulled
out into the road, everyone would be able to see inside and to jeer at them.
The principle that prisoners had
dignity and should not be on public show had gone along with the women’s
liberation movement. Females were now
little more than chattels and when they erred, they needed a sharp lesson. Public humiliation was a most effective part
of that lesson.
The door clanged shut, the driver got
in and off they went. It was as bad as
Angela had thought it was going to be.
People had heard of the court’s decision and men had gathered to watch
as the vehicle came out, all staring in at the naked girls crouching in the
wagon. The driver went slowly to add to
their misery and they were able to hear snippets of comments, especially as
they were stopped at lights.
“Serve the sluts
right. Hope they put them on park
duty. I’d like to see the blonde’s
buttocks whipped to harder and harder effort …”
“Should be shorn of her hair; make her
into a real slave …”
“Should have sent her
to the public brothel. That’d really
teach her what her role in life is …”
These and other like comments had the
girls crying in no time. But there was
no let-up. All the way to the pens,
similar comments or parts of them were offered.
The pens were on the outskirts of the
city, a part of the municipal depot. The
girls were kept in cages near the front of the depot and a public viewing
gallery had been constructed outside the barred front of the cages, rather like
at those old-fashioned zoos where you stared in at the caged animals. For a fee, you could come and walk up and
down the gallery, peering in at the hapless females incarcerated therein. All part of the punishment … Of course, during the day, they were
working but from six until nine, every night of the week, you could come and
stare in at the hundreds of women and girls doing it hard.
The cages were each two metres high
and three square. The floors and back
walls were concrete, the roof corrugated iron and the other walls: the front
and sides, made of iron bars. At the front, just inside the bars was a
trough through which flowed clean water.
This was for drinking. At the end
of the row of cages, the drinking water ran down the side of the cage to its
rear and thence into another trough that sloped in the opposite direction to
the one at the front and ran along the back of the cages and thence into the
sewer. Water was turned on to run in
these troughs for five minutes every hour during the times the women were in
residence. They had to squat over this
to relieve themselves—all in view of the watching public.
Before Angela and her companions were
delivered to the cages however, they had to be processed. There were, of course, the entries to be made
in the register but then they were taken to be depilated. It had been decided that to shave them clean
of body hair and thus expose their sex totally would be an added shame. And shame was a very big part of their
punishment. As well as the hard labour,
that is. Each of them was in turn made
to stand up before the barber and have her pubic hair whisked off. Then the depilatory ointment was smeared all
over the newly shaved parts as well as her legs and under-arms. This was both painful and effective. After a few applications they would be naked
all over for the rest of their lives …
The last part of their initiation into
the world of municipal slavery was their ‘welcome’. Welcome it was called but it was as far from
a welcome as Angela could imagine. They were
taken out to the public viewing area and up onto a small dais. There was a metre-high wooden post standing
in the centre of this. On its top was a
set of stocks and Angela was ordered to place her wrists in the holes while the
top was then lowered and bolted shut.
Her ankles were pulled wide apart and locked into manacles set into the
floor of the dais a few feet back from the stocks. She was now bent over at the hips and her
legs pulled well over a metre apart.
One of the guards now came up, holding
a supple cane in his hand.
“Ten strokes is the minimum for each
new slave,” he announced sonorously.
“But if they scream or wiggle their buttocks too much, then we double it
…” Angela
started to cry. “That will get you
nowhere, slave. Keep it up and I will
immediately double the welcome.” She
quickly subsided.
He raised the cane while the watching
public—and the other new girls, looked on, the former in gleeful anticipation
of the screams and gyrations of the girl’s body; the other girls in anguish
that, very soon, they too would be facing the same treatment.
The guard raised the cane high and
then down it came. ‘Thwap!”