Abstract
Robert Latou Dickinson (1861–1950) was a Brooklyn, New York-based obstetrician-gynecologist who led the development of sexual science as an academic discipline in the US. This essay examines his thinking regarding the role of technology in shaping women's sexuality and reproductive health in the industrial era. In articles from 1887 and 1895, he argued that the corset, the sewing machine, and the bicycle had injurious effects on women’s health. He was also concerned that women could derive erotic satisfaction from the bicycle if used to stimulate orgasm. Dickinson's arguments about the human-technological relationship structured the creation of sexual science as an academic field.
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Drucker, D.J. (2021). Shaping the Erotic Body: Technology and Women’s Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century American Medicine. In: Giami, A., Levinson, S. (eds) Histories of Sexology. Global Queer Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65813-7_8
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