Some physicians declared that the bicycle promoted immodesty in women and harmed their reproductive organs. Moralists thought women on bicycles were indecent because they wore shorter skirts to ride them, and worried that women would find straddling the seat sexually stimulating. The bicycle craze helped kill the bustle and the corset and encouraged “common-sense dressing.” Many in the women’s suffrage movement adopted bicycles. In 1896, Susan B. Anthony declared: “Bicycling . . . has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. ... It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.” The women’s movement embraced the bicycle, and its democratization became part of their drive for social equality.

— Technology matters by David E. Nye