I disagree that corsets and stays were articles of female oppression per se.
Yes, there have always been pressures on women to take fashions to extremes, and some high society women may have laced corsets tighter than was good for them, but this is not true for every woman who wore corsets.
Firstly, the idea of waist clinching is a bit of a myth. Yes, some styles of corsets appear to shrink the waist, but what most of the original styles did was to create a rounder shape so that the waist was smaller from side to side, but was in fact deeper front to back, ie from a 0 shape to a O shape.
Secondly, a properly made corset that is fitted to your individual dimensions is not uncomfortable. Even poor women would have had access to a made to measure garment, albeit one that had parts salvaged from cast offs of wealthier women. Unless you go to the extremes of lacing, they do not inhibit your breathing.
Thirdly, women of all classes wore corsets, including those doing hard manual work. They most certainly were not lacing so tight that they were fainting at any exertion. Instead, a corset was a garment that provided considerable support when you were hand washing large bundles of linen, or carrying buckets of water up three flights of stairs in the house in which you were working, or on your hands and knees scrubbing floors. It should be born in mind that many male labourers would wear a corset, usually of leather, for just the same reason. Yes, the corset died out in the Victorian era, but it is probably no coincidence that this coincided with the increase in labour saving devices in the home.