Women on wheels
The bicycle?s feminist legacy has faded, but modern feminists are fighting for cycling again The bicycle?s place on city streets has been contentious from the beginning. At once vulnerable and menacing?fragile in the face of oncoming traffic, but with the power to flatten unwary pedestrians?bikes provoke extreme reactions. In urban settings especially, they inspire cults of allegiance and waves of opposition. This intensity of feeling dates back to America?s first cycling craze, in the 1890s, when the machines went from novelty to ubiquity at dizzying speed. Manufacturing increased 20-fold over the course of a decade, and by the end of the century, a million bikes a year were rolling out of factories. In 1900, the United States census report claimed, ?Few articles ever used by man have created so great a revolution in social conditions as the bicycle.? From the start, that revolution was divided by gender. For men, the bicycle was ?merely a new toy,? wrote Munsey?s magazine in 1896. But to women, it was ?a steed upon which they rode into a new world.? Compact, cheap, and liberating, the bicycle was the tool that broke the lock on a generation. Suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony claimed it had done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. ?I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bike,? she said in 1895. ?It gives her a feeling of self reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat.? Anthony wasn?t the only reformer to hail the joy and li...
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