When Women Wore Shoes

So, I wrote another novelette. It starts like this:

Where I come from, women often wore shoes, which, to the best of my knowledge, never caused anyone dismay, in and of itself. Irina liked shoes more than most, which again, was not a problem per se. The potential for problems would have arisen only on warm days when she wore her best high-heeled, strappy sandals and nothing else. Truth be told, it wasn’t her nudity that bothered people, or should I say, more specifically, the guys, since only men ever seemed uncomfortable with her flesh (and were they being honest, I think most men would confess that they weren’t even slightly bothered by seeing her lovely skin). Rather, what troubled them was that the law protected women so fully that men weren’t allowed to accost, fondle, molest, assault, abduct, intersect, cat call, ogle, languidly peruse, or even acknowledge them or their nudity without a woman’s express, verifiable consent. It is the inability to own what they desired that troubled that small minority of men. The penalty for such behavior was typically public censure followed by having one’s genitals forcibly removed with a sharp instrument, often a set of wire cutters. The police won’t do it, and the courts certainly do not administer such punishment due to worries about the constitutionality of corporal punishment, but be assured that someone will intercede and the perpetrators will have their testicles removed. If their genitals aren’t removed, then they were likely killed straight away and you will never find the body, intact or dismembered. We’re not savages, so you won’t get de-balled for giving a pretty girl a hard look, but you will certainly be neutered if you touch her. Sometimes all the Law has to do to be effective is not to punish those who enforce it. Women were quite willing to do so, once they realized they had the power to do so.