Assbike: The Great Emancipator

The cycle’s relative accessibility coupled with the sense of freedom it lent its rider led many to praise the device as a great leveler in American society...An article in an 1896 Scientific American breathlessly praises the "universal fraternity" that has put all on "equal terms" and notes that "as a social revolutionizer it has never had an equal. It has put the human race on wheels, and has thus changed many of the most ordinary processes and methods of social life." more.

Susan B. Anthony, women's rights advocate and future star of an ill-fated dollar, was to say that the bicycle had "done more to emancipate women then anything else in the world".(Willard, 90)...The leveling effect acheived by the woman on the bicyle was so great that the coming of the automobile and subsequent demise of the bicyle can be though of as a major step backwards for women's empowerment. more