When women riders and drivers told us they wanted more control over how they ride and earn, we listened. That feedback led to Women Preferences, features designed to give women the choice to ride with other women. Since our first pilots last summer, we’ve heard just how much that choice matters—from feeling more comfortable in the back seat to more confident behind the wheel.
Probably gonna get flak for this, but as a man, I have no issues if women want to stick with other women and I don’t particularly care if I have the option to pick whatever driver I want.
Obviously weirdness and sexual misconduct can occur to both men and women from both men and women, but it’s disingenuous as hell to pretend that men being weird or sexual towards women isn’t the most common by a colossal margin.
No flak. I was gonna post the same thing. Women deserve to feel safe too.
Two people literally disagree with you that women should feel safe.
This is why these options are now available to women.
I think the issue people are taking is with collective punishment and validating prejudice.
I understand why women feel this is necessary, but I also understands that a policy like this paints all men with the same brush. It’s like they are saying “Since a small number of men are creeps, we give you the option to avoid all men”. Which seems to be counterproductive.
Meanwhile, Uber has invasive tracking, where they know everyone’s history. They know how many drives a customer has provisioned without incident. And I have always considered these rideshare things to be particularly safe, because all parties are consenting to the tracking. That’s not guarantee nothing will happen, of course, but it is more unlikely when all parties know Big Uber is watching you.
If Uber had rolled this out and said “you have the option to avoid rides with the opposite gender without an established history in our files”, then I think I would have less of a problem with it. But it seems like I can do everything right, and be respectful of everyone, and give Uber shitloads of money, and still be potentially waiting longer for a ride, just because of my parts. How is that OK?
Large numbers of men are creeps, and I say that as a man. That’s the issue, that’s why they’re doing this.
Is there a technical definition of “large” that justifies this? If not, then this is all based on feelings.
I think it’s bad news to generalize entire large groups like this, no matter how good the intentions are.
Well yeah it’s based on feelings and it definitely just mindlessly repeating the extremely popular male bashing perspective the majority of fediverse users blindly accept as dogma, but it’s also undeniably true. A very large number of us are creeps. If you’d like to get technical, we can pull sexual crimes stats of men vs women and see which number is larger… But, do we really have to?
And it’s not that we’re inherently evil or perverse by nature. It’s that, more often than not, in one on one interactions we are the ones with the potential ability to physically dominate and coerce the human of the other sex. Every once in a while a man will delude himself, snap, explode or give in to whatever dark urge was brooding in him and use that ability in some horrible way.
The probability of an individual of whatever demographic doing something horrible is = (the probability they have the urge to attempt the horrible thing) x (the probability they have the capacity to carry out the horrible thing). It’s really not that complicated.
And If you think women would never do this if they had, on average, larger body frames, more strength and were brainwashed into seeking validation through dominance from an early age, please allow me to introduce you to the fascinating matriarchal pack dynamics of the spotted hyena, where females are larger and stronger than males. Guess which sex is more aggressive and socially dominant?
It’s not that us men are evil. It’s that on average, we have physical power that more often than not, woman do not. Any form of power has the potential to corrupt, cause it can be used for evil and therefore, every once in a while, given a large enough time frame or population, it will.
It’s not about you. Repeat after me: It’s not about you. It’s about women who feel unsafe.
Most sexual assault is not reported.
And you will not be waiting longer, women who choose this service will be. So cut the pity party. You lose absolutely nothing.
The more I think about it, though, the more I think this is a genuine discrimination case. If Uber had rolled this out and said “White drivers can choose to pick up only white passengers”, would that be OK? Or even “Male drivers can choose to only pick up male passengers”?
Heck, I even think if they rolled this out and said “female users can choose a preference for only female drivers”, that might be able to fly, because it’s the buyer of the service expressing that view.
But to me, for the people offering the service, there is no difference between this and someone who doesn’t want to make a cake for a gay wedding. When you are offering a service to the general public, you can’t really discriminate like that. Yes, I understand the safety thing. But a store that catered to women wouldn’t be able to bar men from entering at all. Why is a car service any different? Yes, drivers are using their own cars, but it is still a car service.
You know what sucks the most about this? They’re probably gonna get sued over it, either by the Trump DOJ or some shitty Red State AG, who is probably gonna win.
An estimated 20% of women will be sexually assaulted in their life. Half of those will happen by the time that they’re 16. 40% of trans women will be sexually assaulted.
This isn’t about your feelings being hurt.
Probably gonna get flak for this
Oh please.
You know perfectly well it’s not a controversial opinion.I only added it because I wasn’t sure if there was a population of man-children who feel slighted every time women get anything even remotely positive on Lemmy like there was on Reddit
There is. It’s substantial, but much more subtle than on Reddit. Slurs and outright sexism usually get you banned pretty quick here, so it’s largely just the casual sexism left, but it runs pretty deep. And it’s been here at least as long as I have overall (my oldest account is about 3 yo). In the original wave, the shitty population drove off the vast majority of cis female users within 6 months, which is a huge part of why the demographics around here are so heavily skewed toward men. This is also why the women’s communities, which all died out and were resurrected during the second Lemmy population boom, are so heavily policed to shut men down.
You can tell we have such a population because all posts like these about women getting anything at all, good or bad, always, without fail, have an absolute glut of comments. If you then take the time to read all of them, a solid percentage are very clearly motivated by sexism. Now, commenters are obviously self-selecting, so it’s impossible to say in absolute terms, but of the people who choose to comment on such things, and generously leaving out any comments that may just be poorly worded, I’ve typically seen between 10 and 30% of the comments have such motivations, depending how old the post is and how much visibility it got. It’s not always the same people, either, it’s different shitty people most of the time. Downvotes also flow like wine if you challenge those comments, or call out the trend.
As a man, this makes me sad. As a man, I also understand.
Maybe Uber should be responsible for background checks of their drivers and hold them accountable for their actions and be able to fire them for misconduct. But that might require hiring drivers as actual employees. And then Uber could issue company vehicles.
Oh wait, I’m describing taxi companies that already existed before Uber.
The fact that we allow Uber/Lyft to operate as a way to skirt regulations that were put in place to keep people safe, and then trust Uber will implement work around solutions like this is ridiculous.
Same goes to AirBnB
Agreed. Contract work that isn’t actually contract work should be illegal.
While I agree with this, and I’m not defending skirting regulations, before rideshare apps, taking taxis was an awful experience. At least half the time, if you try to pay with a credit card, the machine was “broken”, if you wanted to get a ride at a specific time you had to call ahead and hope that a taxi would show up.
Rideshsre apps forced regular taxis to up their game and provide better service, some did and now have their own apps.
I don’t even know what regulations they are skirting. You can’t just sign up to become a driver without submitting information just like any other job. Background checks are required, licenses and what not. People are also supposed to leave feedback if they had a bad experience so I could only imagine that the complaints are surrounding the idea that Uber isn’t following up on the feedback enough. That said if 500 people ride with that driver and rate them well, and 1 person says they were a perv, and Uber looks at it and finds that person has called several male drivers pervs while they get good ratings from everyone else, there could be a problem that those people have a type, or Uber could be thinking the issue is the rider at that point
Worker regulations mostly. Since drivers aren’t employees, they get no benefits whatsoever.
Uber doesn’t deserve much credit for this…they’re just streamlining a behaviour that’s already present among their drivers and customers. It’s a business decision.
As a man I also want to select a female driver only. Seriously here in the Netherlands if you get a male driver good chance it’s some agro 20 year old high on NOx who also hates queers. I’m not even queer but I don’t want my money going to cunts like that.
The nitrous oxide high lasts 60 seconds max; how are Uber drivers getting high on the stuff while driving unless they’re actively hitting the chargers while behind the wheel? Your comment makes no sense.
I don’t get why they don’t just make this a global option. Anyone can choose their preferred gender. Some women prefer women, some prefer men. Hell, some men prefer men.
You can already choose your driver or passenger. All this is is streamlining something that’s common.
Fair enough, I don’t use driving services so honestly don’t know what the experience is like.
Awesome, but they should also give men the option to choose to ride with a man.
There’s already an app that does that.
It’s called grindr.
I get it, but it’s discrimination and someone is going to sue them for it.
“I’m entitled to make women who are victims of sexual assault remarkably uncomfortable and fearing for their safety! I demand compensation!”
“I only want white drivers” - some racist.
It’s the same fucking thing.
In this case the effect is so serious that you don’t really have a good option. It would be like if specifically Asian people were joining Uber trying to sexually assault men, I would probably do something to allow men to avoid Asians. It’s absolutely racist but at least I’m massively reducing the sexual assaults. The reason this doesn’t apply to race as much is almost every time something was blamed on race it was just a lie or completely misrepresented.
can males avoid women drivers or is that considered sexist? what if a male wants to mitigate the chance of being falsely accused of assault/rape? I hope people have the choice regardless of gender
edit: the downvotes are funny… I assume people think I mean women should not have the choice, but I mean the opposite. EVERYONE should have a choice, or no one. it’s call being fair. rape/sexual assault is not a good scenario for anyone and if people are fearful, they should be allowed to make a choice that allows them to feel comfortable. the downvotes just show me that people are disrespectful/not caring when it comes to fairness and equality. l… or they are just flat out sexist pricks.
LOL of course not. Equality for me, not for thee.
This is the shit that makes men look bad.
Men absolutely do not experience sexual harassment at the same level that women do.
It’s not close at all.
Why can’t we just let the women have a dub without being all “buhhh what about da men???”
And women don’t experience accusations of sexual harrassment at the same level that men do.
Men also experience plain physical assault at ~5x the rate of women.
Why can’t we just support equality for everyone? Why is that so hard?
Why can’t we just support equality for everyone? Why is that so hard?
At least part of it is because of people like you who get upset whenever someone challenges the grossly inequitous status quo.
You’re the one advocating for inequality.
Things aren’t equal now. You don’t want that to change.
that’s literally why I bought up the topic of equality… and you’re resisting it because… actually there is no reason to resist equality.
It might be considered sexist, depending on who you ask.
The amount of males being falsely accused of sexual assault is much lower than the amount of females being exposed to sexual assault. Hence why there has been provided a measure for women at this scale, and not for men.
The amount of males being falsely accused of sexual assault is much lower than the amount of females being exposed to sexual assault.
And you know this because… vibes?
It’s things like this that make me, as a man, to prefer male servers/drivers.
If women chose other women, that’s fine but I do feel bad about the men getting less work, so I think it’s only fair to balance the demand gap by allowing men to chose male servers/drivers.
That behaviour would probably have the opposite effect that the people who created this rule would want.
they are choosing women drivers for their safety, you are throwing a tantrum because women wanting to feel safe in the face of a systemic and well documented issue has hurt your feelings.
A small percentage of women will ever face any sort of harassment from male drivers.
At the same time, all male drivers will be affected by this feature, reducing their life-supporting income through no fault of their own, simply because they have “male” in their documents. I think that’s the point.
A small percentage of women will ever face any sort of harassment from male drivers.
Ask any women in your life, it is not a small percentage. And you dismissing their safety concerns and prioritizing your comfort is the exact reason why this is necessary.
If all men would look at this and say “Sucks that this is needed, but way too many men are genuinely dangerous and we should actively purge them from our institutions so in the future solutions like this won’t be needed” then we would not have a problem in the first place. It is people like you that makes half the population afraid and anxious about the other half.
Alhamdulillah, the women are imposing Sharia upon themselves.
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So what happens when the rider can’t find a ride because 99% of drivers are men and it’s the middle of the night? We never ask the hard questions, do we? Should sex discrimination in employment be legal? I’ve always felt bad for male masseuses, nurses and childcare providers having to deal with additional scrutiny and having money taken out of their pocket not because of merit but because of gender.
Lyft has been doing it for a while and it seems to work out.
This also boosts demand for women drivers
You can’t make women want to drive. I get why they wouldn’t want to. Lots of creeps.
give men the option to ride with men as well, and nobody will have an issue with this
Many women want to ride with other women for safety reasons. Men would only choose their riders gender for bigotry reasons. There is little reason to enable their bigotry. If fewer bigots ride it’s a bug not a feature.
and this right here is why I cant stand a lot of other liberals. you guys make me ashamed to be one… smh
How hard is this to understand. Women frequently feel unsafe with strange men in uncontrolled situations like alone in a car because men who are commonly bigger and stronger commonly beat and rape women. Men who are on average bigger and stronger are very rarely assaulted or raped by strange women because women are both less physically imposing and are less prone to violence and most specifically sexual violence. Whereas its not impossible or unheard for a woman to be so this is so uncommon it is rarely something people are reasonably concerned about either factually or culturally.
Did I really need to tell you any of that or did you in fact already know that. The whiners here do NOT want men to be equal and have the ability to chose men drivers they want women not to have a path to discriminate against them because THEY believe they aren’t the problem. Hell the guys who ARE the problem are also sure they aren’t the problem.
nothing about this is hard to understand, I just don’t want to perpetuate hate and inequality, or create division. letting both sexes choose their own sex if they want to wouldn’t leave anyone feeling slighted. its a simple solution that wouldn’t leave anyone room to complain.
Why do we care if anyone has room to complain?
why not just let both sexes choose their own if they want to? when we have an easy way to be as inclusive as possible why not be?
Citation needed. Back up those claims cuz that’s sounding like pure emotional projection.
You need a citation for many women being unsafe with random men in a car but the reverse not being true. OK buddy.
Hold on a second. Did you honestly think you were coming across as unemotional when you said that?
Keep your emotions out of it, I learned to manage that, takes a lot of work but it’s a good skill to have.
Tell me what facts you think you know that makes you claim 100% of men who would use that feature would be doing it for bigotry reasons.
You don’t even need to do citations, I’ll go do the research for us.
The only thing I humbly beg you to tell me is what fact you know that I don’t, I’m not seeing the missing puzzle piece.
If you know something I’m missing I genuinely want to know, cuz I’m not afraid of changing my mind when proven wrong. I just genuinely think you’re just making some unfair assumptions that’s all. There’s no shame in it, most people do it. But it might surprise you to learn that a lot of people would rather die than be wrong about something.
Don’t get mad at me. TALK to me.
So does this mean there is going to gender verification to go along with age verification?
Seems like something that would happen in this timeline.
No because the presumption is that you will provide ID to your employer and they will go by whatever is on the ID when assigning rides.
What employer? Uber drivers are independent contractors.
I’m dubious
Women’s fear of men seems like it will naturally encourage gender segregation in society. If women have control of the formation of that segregation it will move toward privileges and advantages exclusive to women. Since society has finite resources, any community resources that are used exclusively for the beneficial segregation of women, can easily produce inequalities. This is a problem without a fair or equitable solution.
can we have an option to not get a ride with you specifically? regardless of your gender
Men could quit being disgusting predators…
The vast majority of men never were. How few do you need to feel safe? No men ever? Do you even know?
How would you know? Ask your friends and father, your siblings and uncles, how many of them have sexually assulted or harassed a woman; do you believe them? Have you ever cat called or leered? Made inappropriate jokes or comments? Are you a rapist?
More than 1/3 of women have been sexually assaulted; that means of your mom and grand mothers one of them has likely been vicitimized by the male bullshit you are trying to claim isnt an issue. Why not ask them? Think you can handle the truth?
Sexual assault rates of women are not direct indicators of the number of, or gender of, perpetrators. 1/3 of women being victims doesn’t make 1/3 of men perpetrators. That does not follow.
Asking people if they’re a sexual abuser isn’t going to have them saying yes. This is a known barrier in research to getting accurate information of prevalence because people won’t be honest if you ask them if they are an abuser. So asking men I know really isn’t great advice, is it?
Also let me guess, 1/3 of women experience sexual assault of some kind, at some point in their life? That’s a pretty wide net to cast…
Perhaps you can clarify what makes someone a ‘disgusting predator’ so we’re both not he same page?
Go have those conversations.
For reasons that should be obvious, no.
Since we’re doing unsubstantiated conclusions, we’ll be better off with women in charge. Because, women being human, they are capable of vile self-serving and that works out well for everyone.
women wanting equal rights while refusing to commit their fair share of violent crimes is bullshit.
You’re free to do so and people are free to disagree if they find your claims engaging. How many comments on the internet do you think are unsubstantiated claims? I’m guessing this isn’t the response you give for the vast majority of them, is it? What compelled you to do so for this one?
It’s shocking to me how so many people I know who are woke as fuck and quick to shout down any bigotry are so quick to drop all of their principles to hate men.
Segregation never works, and only serves to foster fear, hatred, and division within society You cannot define what a “woman” is in a way that excluded trans-women without also excluding some cis-women with them Your gender identity is what you say it is. Others should do their best to remember any pronouns or name changes Crime is too complicated and nuanced to be reduced to statistics, which are often used by racists and bigots to justify racist and bigoted policies It’s racist to cross to the other side of the street when a person of color comes walking towards you on the side you currently are on. It’s up to you to “Men” are evil monsters who cannot be trusted and need to be locked away
It baffles me how so many people can have all of these ideas, including the last one, and not see the cognitive dissonance there. It’s succumbing to fear and hatred, the same methods of divisive propaganda that has harmed every other group.
Because they form their worldview around their own interests, without realizing it. The label of progressive does a lot to assume moral right and inclusiveness which hides biases of self interest. Many of the beleifs people hold were not formed from the effort of reasoning by them but adopted from the authority of progressive ideology. Religion works in much the same way. It takes concerted effort, emotional regulation and sacrifice to build a rational and consistent worldview which is something most people, even progressives, rarely attempt.
