wheels of change-the bicycle and women's rights

[niyad]

Wheels of Change: The Bicycle and Women’s Rights






In 1896, Susan B. Anthony affirmed that the bicycle “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” The year before, in her book A Wheel Within A Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, temperance reformer and suffragist Frances Willard asserted, “I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world.”

May is National Bike Month. The time to celebrate the “many benefits of bicycling,” says its sponsor, the League of American Bicyclists. But one of the oft-unknown benefits of the bike is the unintentional influence it had on women’s rights. By sparking controversy, the bike inadvertently helped emancipate women toward the end of the 19th century.
When the League of American Bicyclists began in 1880, bicycles—the velocipede and the high-wheel to be specific—were limited to the male upper class. Within six years, however, when the Victor Safety bicycle (the earliest version of the bikes we see today) hit the U.S. by storm, the sport opened up to include the middle class and women. And by the start of the 20th century, the wheel was synonymous with the “New Woman.” How and why the seemingly sudden change? Largely because the Victor hit the American market at a pivotal moment in history, igniting a mixture of discussions on political and social issues that had been escalating for decades.

In the 1830s, temperance groups could be found all over the country. and their main supporters were women. Besides the fact that alcohol abuse was a root cause of domestic violence, the Cult of Domesticity (or True Womanhood) insisted women uphold piety (along with purity, domesticity and, the kicker, submissiveness) and the moral character of their homes and community. Similarly, as the debate over slavery intensified, women once again ventured out of their homes to support the cause. They attended meetings, wrote articles, spoke publicly. But as women shifted into the public sphere, they found they had little rights and little power to induce any real change. It was during this time that temperance reformers and abolitionists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony began to organize the first seedlings of the women’s movement.

As promising as the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention was, it wasn’t until after the Civil War and the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments that women’s rights regained momentum. Social reform and self-improvement were a huge part of the American psyche in antebellum America. Along with women’s rights, dress reform started making headway, particularly between 1870 and 1880. The movement, partly an attempt to challenge long-held beliefs about women and their place in society, called for more subdued, hygienic designs, meaning looser tops and bifurcated garments, or “bloomers” as many knew them (thanks to temperance activist and journalist Amelia Bloomer, who around 1851 debuted the new “costume” in her temperance newspaper, The Lily). The media had a field day. A woman upheld the notion of True Womanhood by wearing heavy skirts and tight and immobilizing corsets.

Women who did wear bifurcated garments were typically working women of the lower class. Gayle Fischer, who wrote a book on the subject titled Pantaloons and Power, explains “For women to take control of their appearance, to distance themselves from a primarily ornamental identity, primarily dependent on men and devoted to pleasing men, was intrinsically transgressive.” It wouldn’t be until the 1890s bicycle craze that bifurcated women’s apparel became popular. And, as Fischer notes, “just as it had 40 years earlier, the popular press reported on society’s shocked reactions to seeing women on bicycles in ‘bifurcated’ or ‘rational’ garments, and printed humorous cartoons, songs, and poems satirizing the female cyclist.”



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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/05/07/wheels-of-change-the-bicycle-and-womens-rights/

[Warpy]

1. I don't think you can overstate the bicycle's importance to women

They no longer had to take a horse away from plowing and hitch it to a wagon or buggy to go into town. They no longer had to nag a husband to get them out of isolation to visit another woman for an hour or two. The freedom to go where they wanted to go when they wanted to can't be overstated.

Men, of course, felt horribly threatened, as the above ad shows.

I imagine a lot of the butter, egg and knitted glove money went to that bicycle.

[niyad]

2. you have it exactly correct