The Role of the Bicycle in the Women's Liberation Movement
Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think that it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel... the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood. – Susan B. Anthony
For women, the initial struggle in the 19th century was for the right to ride a bicycle at all. From the beginning, a significant facet of society firmly believed that machinery and athletic activity should remain part of a man’s world and that a woman’s world should remain distinct and separate. Questions surrounding the issue of women on bicycles arose, such as how women should ride, when they should ride, who they should ride with, what clothing they should ride in, and whether they should race. Many critics were convinced that bicycle riding threatened women’s physical and mental health; their hair, complexions, femininity, families, morals, and worst of all, their reputations were at stake. It was argued that “cycling heats the blood... destroys feminine symmetry and poise” and is “a disturber of internal organs.”
The perceived frailty of the female organism was a common theme in these arguments and many doctors volunteered their expert advice. Physicians Thomas Lothrop and William Porter argued that the bicycle promoted immodesty in women and would inevitably harm their reproductive systems. An American doctor suggested that “In young girls the bones of the pelvis are not able to resist the tension required to ride a bicycle, and so may become distorted in shape, with perhaps, in after life, resulting distress.” Advertisements in newspapers promised to cure the effects of injury to the kidneys, liver, and urinary tract, and even went as far as to suggest that a possible side effect of the vibrations from the wheel might eventually lead to death.
Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man in 1871. His theories of natural evolution downplayed women’s role while encouraging the male obsession with masculinity and physical superiority. Gymnasiums sprang up and men took to bicycling as well as soccer, cricket, boxing, and baseball to stave off the feminizing effects of city life. Many colleges added sports to their curricula and the Olympic Games were re-established in 1896, but all of this was specifically for men. While the warnings of health risks associated with women cyclists was a popular theme, there were at the same time equally pointed rebukes such as this piece from the Chicago Daily News:
When woman wants to learn anything or do anything useful or even have any fun there is always someone to solemnly warn her that it is her duty to keep well. Meanwhile in many states she can work in factories ten hours a day, she can stand behind counters in badly ventilated stores from 8 o’clock to 6, she can bend over the sewing machine for about 5 cents an hour and no one cares enough to protest. But when the same women, condemned to sedentary lives indoors, find a cheap and delightful way of getting the fresh air and exercise they need so sorely, there is a great hue and cry about their physical welfare.
The biggest argument against women riding bicycles was the alleged assault on the moral fabric of society that this would foster. Physically speaking, the idea that bicycle riding might be sexually stimulating was a popular concern. It was thought that the combination of straddling the saddle with the pedaling motion would lead to arousal in the female, leading to the habit of masturbation. Special “hygienic” bicycle seats became available, with a recession in the area where a woman’s genitalia would otherwise come into contact with the seat. This leads to what was perceived to be the most threatening aspect of a population of women on bicycles: it was not women’s health that people worried about, but their morals. The unrefined women of the middle class were deemed to be the most vulnerable to these effects. Through the use of the bicycle, women were able to free themselves from the ties of their homes and their jobs, and began to experience a new kind of independence. The mere freedom of mobility for a woman was thought by most respectable people to be utterly unacceptable, even immoral.
Cycling women were regarded with a pious horror by society, and by the public at large. It was openly said that a woman who mounted a bicycle hopelessly unsexed herself; she was stared at and remarked upon in town. It was supposed that no woman would take so masculine an amusement unless she was fast, unwomanly, and desirous of making herself conspicuous, and accordingly all cycling women had to suffer from the supposition.
It was this scorn of the public that played the largest role in discouraging women from venturing out alone. Polite society was horrified to witness “unchaperoned women... blithely riding along lonely lanes... a prey to any passing tramp, desperate with hunger and naturally vicious. Their limbs... on display for the world to leer at. Petticoats fluttering brazenly.... sleeves drawn back, bosoms unlaced...” and thought, “you see what... bicycles have brought us to – licentiousness and depravity.” Unchaperoned, a woman might put herself in harm’s way, be vulnerable to the dangers of attack, or her morals might be tested by “being seduced into imprudent conduct with intemperate company.”
By the 1890s, more and more women had taken to the “wheel” despite the critical attention they attracted, and by 1895, popular opinion finally came around. “The sport which had been denounced as injurious to the health and dangerous for delicate women became suddenly the very best way for idle, sensitive women to improve their health.” Ladies riding clubs became more popular, like the Coventry Lady Cyclists which was founded in 1892, the same year that the Lady Cyclist Association was formed.
Less than a year later, when a sixteen-year-old named Debbie Reynolds rode 120 miles from Brighton to London and back in eight and a half hours (while wearing “rational dress”), Cycling Magazine wrote her a scathing review. She became a hero and a martyr for dress reformers, and ultimately for the cause of women’s emancipation in general.
In June of 1894, an American named Annie Kopchovsky became the first woman to ride around the world. Annie’s ride was the result of a wager between two wealthy clubmen of Boston that no woman could match the male record of a decade before. The bet was for $20,000 to $10,000 (that Annie would fail), which was a huge amount of money as the average yearly salary was about $1,000. The wager was not just a test of physical ability, but of a woman’s capacity to make her own way in the world. Annie had several stipulations which added to the challenge. The wager required her to start penniless, accept no gratuities, and complete the trip in 15 months. She had to procure the signatures of American consuls in certain foreign cities to prove that she’d been there. And, she had to earn $5,000 above expenses en route. A $10,000 prize awaited her if she succeeded. Annie assumed the name “Annie Londonderry” as part of a sponsorship from a local spring water company. Then, after a send-off from a crowd of 500 supporters and “packing a pearl handled revolver and a change of underwear,” she embarked on her journey.
During the course of Annie’s ride, she followed the stages of dress reform: starting in skirt and blouse, then switching to the bloomer, and eventually donning men’s pants for much of the trip. “Mrs. Londonderry expressed the opinion that the advent of the bicycle will create a reform in female dress that will be beneficial,” read an article in the Omaha World Herald during her stop there in August of 1895. Annie did “win the day” when she pedaled into Boston in September of 1895 and from then on enjoyed the life of a celebrity, making headlines and appearing in advertisements “for everything from milk to perfume.”
By allowing women the feeling of freedom, mobility, and independence, the bicycle helped to fundamentally transform social relations between the sexes. Not only did the bicycle play a large role in freeing women from the restraints of constricting fashions, it changed the idea of female beauty by dispelling the myths of women’s fragility and helplessness. The early women’s liberation movement found in the bicycle a vehicle for change; as the famous women’s emancipationist Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton proclaimed: “Woman is riding to suffrage on a bicycle.”
Today, some of mountain biking’s biggest stars are women, and racers like Missy Giove and Juli Furtado get as much press and respect as the guys. The fact that women’s racing prize money is significantly less, and that most bikes today are still designed around a man’s proportions of a longer torso to leg ratio, indicates that we still live in a male dominated society and perhaps we have some distance to ride yet.
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