by Kate Lister
The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children featured an article by Dr Robert Dickinson on ‘Bicycling for Women’ that addressed the issue of sexual excitement. ‘A very grave objection has been made to the use of the bicycle among women, which, if true, would induce us to be exceedingly cautious in ever suggesting this exercise. It has been said to beget or foster the habit of masturbation.’ Dickinson continued:
One of the very able women who teach physical culture in New York told a medical friend of mine that a pupil, who claimed a rather varied experience in sexual pleasures, said that she could not ask a more satisfactory development than could be obtained from the saddle of her bicycle. Dr Vance has observed a case of an overwrought, pallid, somewhat emaciated girl of 15, whose saddle was arranged so that the front pommel rode upward at an angle of about 35°, who stooped forward noticeably in riding, and whose actions, during the time when he had good opportunity to observe her, strongly suggested to him the indulgence we are considering.10
Thankfully, common sense seems to have prevailed, and although Dickinson knew of some women who arranged their saddles to maintain ‘constant friction over the clitoris and labia’, he did not believe this was commonplace. He argued that there was only a slight ‘danger of the habit being started or fostered’ when a woman took up cycling.11
Despite several prominent doctors reassuring the public that women were not using bikes to masturbate, the mere suggestion they were was enough for cycling to be condemned by many as indecent.
In 1889, Canada’s first woman’s page editor, Kit Coleman, wrote:
No girl over 39 should be allowed to wheel. It is immoral. Unfortunately, it is older girls who are ardent wheelers. They love to cavort and careen above the spokes, twirling and twisting in a manner that must remind them of long dead dancing days. They have descended from the shelves in myriads and in a burst of Indian summer are disporting themselves on the highways and byways.12
A Victorian postcard of a nude woman celebrating her bike.
In 1896, Charlotte Smith, the president of the American Rescue League, claimed that ‘bicycling by young women has helped swell the ranks of reckless girls who finally drift into the standing army of outcast women of the United States more than any other medium’. She went as far as to call the bicycle ‘the Devil’s advance agent’.13
In order to try and maintain modesty, some companies issued ‘hygiene saddles’ with holes in to try and relieve ‘harmful pressure’ on a lady’s undercarriage. Some bikes came equipped with screens to conceal a lady’s ankles. But it wasn’t just the indelicate fact that a saddle must be sat upon that was cause for concern.
The bicycle also offered men and women the opportunity for romance and sexual adventure, which no doubt added to their erotic quality. Cycling meant couples could get away from home unchaperoned and easily overcome geographical restrictions to meet up. The freedom the bicycle offered made some suspicious that cycling was being used for ‘impure purposes’.14 Certainly, cycling romances were a hot topic in the late nineteenth century. The English periodical The Wheelwoman, for example, reported that fifteen engagements were announced in the days following a cycling club picnic, and declared ‘surely no one could possibly desire a better recommendation for cycling than this?’15
It is hard to understand how anyone fell in love during a bike ride when doctors started to warn cyclists about a devastating condition called ‘bicycle face’. This terrible affliction affected men and women equally, but it was considered particularly upsetting for women. In 1897, Dr A. Shadwell described the symptoms of bicycle face thus: ‘set faces, eyes fixed before them, and an expression either anxious, irritable, or at best stony’.16 In 1897, the editor of Harper’s Magazine suggested ladies chew gum when riding as ‘chewing gum keeps the face mobile and prevents the form of that expression of anxiety that doctors tell us may grow in time to be an essential part of a lady bicyclist’s features’.17
Thankfully, not all Victorians took this seriously and bicycle face became a long-running joke. Newspapers of the time are full of humorous poems and jokes about bicycle face, such as this one featured in the Derry Journal in 1895.
Those women who were prepared to risk bicycle face, damaging their ‘matrimonial organs of necessity’, cumming on a saddle and being accused of sneaking off for a quick ride, had another ‘indecent’ obstacle to overcome. It very quickly became apparent that if women wanted to ride a bike, then their dress had to change. The Victorian corset was not compatible with cycling. Victorian corsets restricted women’s waists to an ‘ideal’ circumference of 17–22 inches, which precluded anything more strenuous than embroidering doilies and fainting. In an effort to prevent women freeboobing it on their bikes, corset companies tried to sell ‘bicycle corsets’ that allowed the wearer to ‘ride with grace’. They didn’t catch on.
Poem about ‘bicycle face’, from Derry Journal, 23 September 1895.
As well as ditching the corset, women started to view the miles of skirted crinoline, bustles and petticoats that they donned each day as a pain in the padded arse. In order to cycle safely, some women took to wearing knickerbockers and loose clothing. The knickerbockers were deeply shocking to the conservative Victorians as they forced a recognition that women had two legs and that they opened. The image of a woman sitting astride her bicycle, calves on show, her breasts unrestricted by a corset, and a saddle nestled between her legs was an undeniably sexual image. This presented a challenge to women who wanted to cycle comfortably and to avoid accusations of indecency.
‘THE PERFECT POISE of the woman who wears a Ferris Waist is easily distinguishable. She rides with easy grace because every motion, every muscle is absolutely free. She rides without fatigue because she enjoys perfect respiration.’
In response to this, in 1881 the Rational Dress Society was formed in London, and opposing women’s restrictive clothing and cycling was right at the heart of it. Similar groups sprang up all over the world. Rather than viewing cycling outfits as indecent dress, these groups pushed for them to be accepted as ‘rational dress’. They emphasised the health and safety aspects of cycle wear, as well as pointing to the immoral and impractical nature of mainstream women’s fashions.
The feminist figure of the ‘new woman’ rose in the late nineteenth century. The new woman was independent, educated and outspoken. She challenged traditional notions of dress, marriage, gender and equality, and, of course, she rode a bike. The new woman positioned herself against the Victorian ‘Angel in the House’ version of femininity that was idealised throughout much of the nineteenth century. As a result, the new woman was frequently accused of wanting to be a man, and labelled a ‘grown-up tomboy’, or an ‘adult hoyden’.18
Bicycling was held responsible for encouraging all manner of ‘masculine’ behaviours in women, such as smoking, drinking, swearing and (of course) promiscuity.19 The new woman also demanded entrance into traditionally male-dominated spaces, such as universities. When Cambridge University proposed granting women full admission to university in 1897, male students protested by dangling an effigy of a woman on a bicycle out of a window in Market Square.
A ‘lady cyclist’ is attacked by a mob for wearing socks. From Illustrated Police News, 9 October 1897.
‘The “New Woman” and Her Bicycle, There Will be Several Varieties of Her’, 1895.
At the heart of the hostility towards women cycling was a thinly veiled fear that traditional gender roles were being rejected. As women discarded demure dress, laughed at absurd medical quackery and embraced the independence the bike offered, they cycled out of the domestic and into the public world. As to the fears cycling could led to ‘sexual excitement’, women were able to disprove this themselves, simply by persisting. The subject of masturbation was shrouded in shame and embarrassment, and was not one your average woman would have voiced their opinion on publicly. But it was the women themselves who provided the evidence that they were not peaking while pedaling. The
more women cycled without orgasming, the dafter alarmist doctors looked. It may have been a small victory, but it wrested control of the narrative around female sexuality away from the doctors, and allowed women to challenge it. Of course, there was some truth in the panic that cycling encouraged promiscuity, because it did allow men and women far greater freedom to sneak off, meet up and ring each other’s bells, but to that I can only say hurrah.
A Victorian lady enjoying her penny-farthing.
From Aberdeen Press and Journal, 14 April 1888.
It was the First World War that really forced a change in attitudes towards women’s equality (sexual and otherwise), but the lady cyclists had paved the way in the preceding years. They risked ridicule and even violence to do so, but it was clearly worth it. As British writer Louise Jeye wrote in 1895:
There is a new dawn … of emancipation, and it is brought about by the cycle. Free to wheel, free to spin out in the glorious country, unhampered by chaperones … the young girl of today can feel the real independence of herself and, while she is building up her better constitution, she is developing her better mind.
* * *
* This is a debate that continues to this day. According to research from the University of California, women who regularly cycle enjoy ‘better sexual function’ than non-cyclists, which directly contradicts previous research that suggested there was a link between cycling and sexual disfunction. (Thomas W. Gaither et al., ‘Cycling and Female Sexual and Urinary Function: Results from a Large, Multinational, Cross-Sectional Study’, The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 15.4 (2018), pp. 510–18
** For further reading on early bicycles, see Andrew Ritchie, Early Bicycles and the Quest for Speed (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers, 2018).
1 Jaime Rojo and Steven Harrington, ‘“F**K Art” Opens Wide at Museum of Sex (NSFW)’, Huffpost, 2018
2 Quoted in Julie Wosk, Women and the Machine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 114.
3 South Wales Daily News, ‘A Cure for Bicycle Face’, 1897, p. 3.
4 Quoted in Katherine Murtha, ‘Cycling in the 1890s: An Orgasmic Experience?’, Cahiers De La Femme, 21.3 (2002), pp. 119–21, p. 120.
5 St Louis Medical Review, 32 (1895), p. 209.
6 Iowa State Register, ‘Taking Chances’, 1895.
7 The Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic, 74 (1895), p. 674.
8 ‘Female Cyclists’, The Dominion Medical Monthly, 7.3 (1896), 235–7.
9 ‘Immorality in Canada’, The Canadian Practioner 21, (1896), 848–9.
10 Robert Dickinson, ‘Bicycling for Women’, The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, 31 (1895), 24–35, p. 33.
11 Ibid.
12 Quoted in Ted Ferguson, Kit Coleman: Queen of Hearts (Markham: PaperJacks, 1979), p. 92.
13 Sue Macy and Meredith Orlow, Wheels of Change (Washington: National Geographic, 2012), p. 18.
14 New Zealand Wheelman, 18 August 1897, p. 7.
15 New Zealand Graphic and Ladies’ Journal, 17 September, 1898, p. 372.
16 Arthur Shadwell, ‘The Hidden Dangers of Cycling’, The National Review, 1897, p. 796.
17 Quoted in South Wales Daily News, ‘Remedy for Bicycle Face’, 1897, p. 3.
18 Clare Simpson, ‘A Social History of Women and Cycling in Late-Nineteenth Century New Zealand’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Lincoln University, 1998), p. 137.
19 New Zealand Wheelman, 30 April 1898, p. 9.
Boys’ Toys
A History of the Sex Doll
Humans are damn clever things, aren’t they? I am typing this chapter on a laptop that is streaming a podcast, my smartphone is within reach and it’s reasonable to assume that the coffee I am swigging is blessedly free from cholera. If I were writing this a few hundred years ago, it would be an entirely different scene. Not only would I have no computer, coffee or smartphone, but I might well have cholera, and what the hell am I doing thinking with my lady brain anyway? We have advanced enormously, and technology has been at the heart of that all the way along.
Technological advancements do not create new ideas so much as offer new ways to fulfil pretty basic human needs. Take, for example, sex robots. We are finally at a point where we have the technology to create a sex robot. They do not have artificial intelligence just yet, but they do have artificial tits and artificial vulvas. What’s more, they can stream your favourite playlist from Spotify out of their orifices while you get down to do the robot-nasty. They aren’t cheap though. An average model will set you back about £15,000, and that’s without including the cost of all the batteries and wet wipes you’ll be getting through.
The prospect of the sex robot has understandably rattled a few cages. An article published in the British Medical Journal of Sexual and Reproductive Health in 2018 painted a fairly bleak picture, pointing out that:
Opponents reject the hypothesis that they reduce sexual crimes, and instead raise concerns about the potential for harm by further promoting the pervasive idea that living women too are sex objects that should be constantly available – ‘misogynistic objectification’ – and intensifying existing physical and sexual violence against women and children.1
In early 2018, two hundred sex workers in Amsterdam protested the opening of more sex doll brothels, understandably pissed off at the threat such self-service poses to their livelihood. Feminist groups have protested against sex robot brothels in Paris, putting pressure on the city council to ban the hire of so-called Xdolls, on the grounds that they objectify and degrade women. And to be sure, the use of sex robots does raise some complex moral issues, but not new ones.
The sex doll is not a new phenomenon. Nor are fears that ‘real’ women are being replaced, or the concern that something deeply perverse and misogynistic is going on. Of course, dildos are ancient as well. In 2009, researchers in France excavated a 36,000-year-old bison horn penial carving now called ‘the Blanchard phallus’.2 And in 2015, archaeologists found a 28,000-year-old stone phallus in Germany.3 Generally, archaeologists are reluctant to call these objects ‘sex toys’ because for all we know they may be Palaeolithic door knockers. But we certainly can’t discount the possibility.
Agalmatophilia is a sexual attraction to a statue, doll or mannequin, and examples of this can be found throughout ancient literature. Even in the earliest records of agalmatophilia, we see the anxieties around objectifying and hating women that frame the sex robot debate today. The Roman poet Ovid (43 BC–AD 17), for example, tells the story of a sculptor called Pygmalion who ‘loathes women as wantons and vows never to marry’. Instead, Pygmalion devotes all his energy to sculpting the perfect woman from ivory and then falls desperately in love with his creation.
Early twentieth-century image of a man copulating with a model of a woman and models of penises mounted on a board.
His heart desired the body he had formed.
With many a touch he tries it – is it flesh
Or ivory? Not ivory still, he’s sure!
Kisses he gives and thinks they are returned;
He speaks to it, caresses it, believes
The firm new flesh beneath his fingers yields…4
Pygmalion takes his lady to bed, buys her presents, decorates her with precious jewellery and begs the gods to make her real. Aphrodite eventually takes pity on him and grants his wish.
The statue of ‘Aphrodite of Knidos’ (or Cnidus) was sculpted by Praxiteles of Athens around the fourth century BC. She is said to be modelled on the courtesan Phryne and is one of the earliest representations of the female body in Greek history. Like the sex robots today, the statue was designed to be the perfect woman. According to Pliny the Elder, ‘a certain individual, it is said, became enamoured of this statue, and, concealing himself in the temple during the night, gratified his lustful passion upon it,
traces of which are to be seen in a stain left upon the marble’.5
The Pygmalion story of trying to create the perfect woman continues to inspire numerous cinematic parallels: My Fair Lady, Pretty Woman, The Stepford Wives, Mannequin, Weird Science, Miss Congeniality, etc. But one of the most important Pygmalion stories is E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (1816), where the protagonist Nathaniel falls in love with Olympia, who is a doll-like automaton. Not only is the story one of the first depictions of a humanoid machine (robot), but it also caught the attention of several psychiatrists, most notably Sigmund Freud, who set about trying to understand why dolls are so damn creepy. Freud didn’t use the term ‘creepy’, he said the dolls were ‘uncanny’, arguing that the ‘uncanny’ is a ‘class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar’.6 Anything that provokes a sense of unease or fear because it distorts something that was once comforting or everyday is uncanny: monstrous mothers, slutty teddy bears, Children of the Corn, etc.
Cnidus Aphrodite. A Roman copy after a Greek original of the fourth century.
Perhaps it is this sense of uncanny that has provoked a backlash against the sex robots. The grossly exaggerated body of a woman, glassy-eyed and open-mouthed, caught somewhere between being alive and not alive, programmed to gratify the sexual whims of he who wields the remote control is an uncomfortable, nay uncanny, prospect. But things have been ‘uncanny’ long before anyone thought to hide a USB port in a rubber nipple.