Should women even ride bicycles?

[sgtiger]

The Bicycle Debate

"Bicycling by women has helped more than any other media to swell the ranks of reckless girls who finally drift into the standing army of outcast women in the United States." (Women's Rescue League)

LOL! I guess we're just a bunch of degenerates. What is the world coming to?

Jeez, could you even imagine riding in a corsette?!!

[sgtiger]

Interesting article published in the New York Times February of 1897.

[warning - PDF format]
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive...CF&oref=slogin

Not only were women trying to establish themselves as cyclists, but they were out-spoken advocates helping to secure rights for bicycles that were enjoyed by other vehicles.

Oh, wow! I've only had a chance to skim through parts of this book but it looks interesting. I can't wait to read more! Not only was she the first woman to argue in front of the supreme court and to run for president, she was a cyclist!

Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would be President
By Jill Norgren

"Lockwood used wit, ingenuity, and sheer force of will to unsettle society's conceptions of her sex."

"Jill Norgren's splendid biography of one of history's most astonishing pioneers-first woman counsel before the Supreme Court, visionary for equal rights, international peace activist, Indian rights litigator, presidential candidate-is provocative, challenging, galvanizing!"

[pll]

These are so much fun ! Thanks for posting them.

Some years ago I was reading a social history book ("Conduct Unbecoming a Woman" by Regina Morantz-Sanchez, about the trials of a female gynecologist) and it appears that the debate about biking and the health of women was a popular subject in medical journals in the mid 1890s, too. Other than concern about damaging some organs/muscles, some doctors feared that, ...er..., women might derive pleasure from the bicycle seat! Talk about degenerates.

Out of curiosity, I tried to find the articles cited in the book but the library at the school I work does not have issues from the 1890s... If anyone is curious, too, and has access to 1895-1896 issues of the American Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics and the Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal, let me know.

Around the same years, Frances Willard (founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union) wrote "Wheel within Wheel". There is an extract of this book about her learning to ride a bicycle, that "most mysterious animal": http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5038/

[smilingcat]

Maybe this explains why when I got married, my mother-in-law said girls shouldn't run because all that up and down jarring motion would cause the uterus to fall out.

That and few other crazy comments. Looking back I think it was pretty funny.

smilingcat

[RoadRaven]

LOL - too funny

I am trying to think about how I can weave this into my classes where we discuss socio-political aspects of women and teaching and childcare/education... sure I can do it... and the students will understand - they know I am a bike/cycling advocate...

Thank you so much for the links - particularly the first - I doubt I would ever have stumbled across it and it is such an interesting little read.

[Zen]

I gave Wheel Within A Wheel by Francis Willard to my SS.

[Velobambina]

Like how my mom didn't want me and my sister to use tampons because we might lose our virginity to Tampax! LOL. Of course, neither of us listened to her. She came from the era of sanitary napkin belts and Modess [she had me when she was almost 40---back in those days, I was the only one in my class with an "old" mom].

[Zen]

She came from the era of sanitary napkin belts and Modess

The first time I saw a girl with a 'whale tail' I thought she was wearing one of those

[margo49]

She came from the era of sanitary napkin belts and Modess .

Please don't call it an "era".
That makes me feel so old.
Your Mum did her best. So did mine giving me the belt and Modess as opposed to the "towels" she grew up washing out.
Also, I was much more picky about what "went up there" after I'd given birth

[DebW]

Maybe this explains why when I got married, my mother-in-law said girls shouldn't run because all that up and down jarring motion would cause the uterus to fall out.

That and few other crazy comments. Looking back I think it was pretty funny.

smilingcat

My mother had similar ideas. After I spent a day shoveling gravel as a teenager, she told me it my affect my organs and forbid me to do it again. And not so many years ago, she tried to tell me that pulling tree stumps wasn't a proper thing for me to do. I was always good at ignoring her advice.

[Duck on Wheels]

When we moved into our house here, we were the first sign that the street was ready for a generation change. The rest of the houses were still owned by the generation that built them back in the 1930's. It was a fine Fall, so I set to work preparing a garden down in one corner of the lot. That meant chopping out the bramble of raspberries that had taken over that corner. So there I was whacking away with a pickaxe and out comes one of the two little ol' spinsters who lived with their widowed and retired cop brother next door. She meanders down to the bottom of her garden, basket on arm. Says she's looking for nettles for soup (in Fall? Not a likely story!) and stops to comment on my work: "Gardening sure does take a man." "Yep [whack!]. Heavy work [whack!]." "Yes, it really does take a _MAN_". "Yep [whack!]. Guess it does [whack!]." She gives up, heads back for the house, then turns back over her shoulder to give it one more try: "By the way, where is your husband?" "He's inside. Somebody's gotta take care of the baby." THAT sent her scuttling inside.

[Zen]

DoW -
He's inside knitting