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!”
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