I got some great news for you all (this is not sarcastic I'm genuinely very excited that my knowledge of Victorian fashion is about to come to bear).
There was a feminist clothing movement in the Victorian era that talked about corsets (among other things), and it's commonly referred to as Victorian Dress Reform, or the Rational Dress Movement (either term will get you there).
they were women who were trying to encourage women to dress more out of practicality than by the whims of fashion. they were against tightlacing, and they actually came up with their own corset replacement called 'emancipation waists' (this was not, within the movement universally accepted. as people have said above, opinions on this varied, and some women liked their corsets, but felt tightlacing went to far, and probably women who had heavier busts would not like the emancipation waist, which looks like it offers no real support). there were also liberty bodices, which were a similar garment and related to the movement.
this movement also helped shift views on corsets, to some extent, and doctors became involved in corset fitting and design, to make sure they were less harmful to women. this led to what is known as the 'hygenic' corset (or the health corset or a dozen other names) which is a much less rigidly boned structural garment. instead of boning it would often just cording (cord run through tight channels, it provides some of the structure of boning, and offers a lot more flexibility), maybe with a little boning, and usually didn't have the steel busk that many older corsets did. this was a little more towards the Edwardian era, and I think these were suggested specifically for pregnant women and young girls, in particular, but I won't swear to it.
there were also arguments about whether a corset was ever healthy for a pregnant women, and so on, and every argument under the sun about tightlacing
here's my favorite fun fact about the rational dress movement- you know those red flannel pajamas with the buttflap? that's called a union suit, and it was originally a women's undergarment and arose as part of this fashion movement.
okay but maybe you the rational dress movement's clothes are kind of... ugly.
that's alright! let's go now to our good friend, the Artistic Dress movement! That's right, I've got, not one, but two clothing movements that sought to get away from the rigid fashions of the Victorian era. this was not about feminism and women's independence per se, and more an aesthetic movement (and is also referred to as the Aesthetic Dress movement). However, it's not unrelated to the Dress Reform Movement, there's shared DNA for sure.
And, as the name implies, arose among the artistic set- it's said to have arisen from the Pre-Raphaelites in particular (that's a whole other conversation, we don't have time for that right now, but here's the wiki for them), who chose medieval subjects and put their models in medieval style dress (as interpreted by Victorian artists) which the models, artists' wives and the artists themselves all adapted into more wearable every day clothing. It was popular among artists and gained popularity in intellectual circles, and spread out from there.
For women, the styling of the movement moved towards simple, elegant, flowing but unstructured (or far less structured, anyway) dresses that were meant to evoke an older style of dress. it was a lot about discarding all of the underthings- the bustle and the corset and the crinoline and all that. This movement more argued from an aesthetic sensibility that those underthings ruined the more natural way people should dress, rather than a feminist one- but, as I've said, the movements shared DNA between them, and someone who had agreed with rational dress but thought the Bloomer Suit was ugly (even Amelia Bloomer stopped wearing them, they never really caught on, we didn't even really have time to talk about the Bloomer Suit because I was focused on underwear but here's a link if you want to know more) this would probably be a much more appealing movement.
there were also no set rules for the Aesthetic movement, it was kind of more about what you found pretty, so Aesthetic dresses vary a lot.
this is FAR from comprehensive (even though I've gone on and on and on) but yeah for sure there were people who had all kinds of objections to corsets at the time and they made up a whole alternative fashion movement about it (I am vastly oversimplifying for comedic effect), not once, but twice!
(please excuse any errors, half of this is going off of memory and scanning wikipedia quickly)
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