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.
You must log in or # to comment.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
As a man, this makes me sad. As a man, I also understand.
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.
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.
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
Uhh I traveled to san Fransisco and there was an Uber booth in mall I was getting some necessities for. The booth dude was like hey come earn some money. I’m not from here , no worries that doesn’t matter, ok well I don’t have a car. That’s fine we can get you sorted on that, it’s a great way to make I little extra money.
No dude I’m not interested.
If you change your mind come back
Worker regulations mostly. Since drivers aren’t employees, they get no benefits whatsoever.
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.
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 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.
deleted by creator
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?
Alhamdulillah, the women are imposing Sharia upon themselves.
deleted by creator
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.
I don’t think anyone worth listening about anything would find this problematic. It ain’t women casually raping and killing, we all know that.
I don’t find this problematic, but umm… I’m just going to leave this here. And while I’m here, why not this… Oh, and this. And umm… this.
Men are statistically way more likely to commit violent and sexual crimes than women (i’m guessing but p sure), sure but um… Would you say “It ain’t white people who are casually killing each other’s gang members”? Gang violence is statistically more likely for people of some races… But would you say that’s a fair statement? And how is it different from your statement?
That’s like 4 people, man, come on. Also, it is DRASTICALLY different, because the differences between the sexes are well documented and easily seen, what are the racial differences that cannot be explained by culture that result in some ethnicities being more dangerous than others? 🤔
Women have to be protected by men FROM other men, across cultures and time. Be real.
That’s like 4 people, man, come on.
Yeah, it’s 4 people. What’s your point?
what are the racial differences that cannot be explained by culture that result in some ethnicities being more dangerous than others?
Great question. As a latino I have dark skin and brown hair and am therefore better at hiding in the shadows. It’s easier for someone to trip with me in the dark if I’m passed out drunk on the floor, possibly causing innocent people injury. This is a serious risk to society and we should be considered dangerous, especially in situations that involve alcohol.
Tomen have to be protected by men FROM other men
Yes, that’s what men are for. We protect from the other -worse- men and whatever it is their women are telling them they need to do and they’ll fucking blindly do it cause yes we’re that dumb.
But also, can we agree we all have to be protected from assholes and ill meaning people, both women and men. Are bad people usually men? Idk maybe. Physical violence-wise, probably, tbh. Are all assholes men though? No, and I can give you at least 4 examples that prove this, but also, the ways that women with bad intentions get what they want is blatantly obvious to anyone who has met one. They get men to do their dirty work for them. Fell free to ask me for a paper or study on this.
Can’t we just speak of people who do horrible things instead of blanket scapegoating a <demographic>?
And you might say men created the system and men traumatize other men which causes more men to be violent and compete with other men to hurt more women and men… But the weird thing about causality and attribution is that it isn’t a linear path and the story ends wherever you arbitrarily choose it does.
Who were these men raised by? Who are more often than not the partners of these horrible men that allow them to commit their atrocities? If us men are all savages that will never have any sense of morality and are doomed to commit one atrocity after another, surely it’s the responsibility of the humans that aren’t monsters to reduce the harm we inevitably cause by existing. And what do women do in the face of this situation? Keep having sex with and producing more men. Thanks a lot, women… Thanks for not only having sex with the parents of the dudes that bullied me in high school, but also literally bringing them to this world and raising them with evil woman influence that brainwashed them into traumatizing me.
Ok so maybe I went just a little bit overboard but surely you understand my point. Can we not just talk about individuals that do horrible things? Cause if the problem is “men exist”, the solution is easy. Women should just stop having sex with us. No more men. Problem solved in 1 generation. If you wanna be faster you could do like the 4 ladies I linked though.
Wow, you got here? I’m surprised… and flattered tbh. thanks for reading and feel free to somehow imply me having a penis reduces my value as a human being.
For real, though. I’m sorry for all the horrible men. And sure, I
might beam an idiot and have opinions you find repulsive, but I know I’m not the only one genuinely doing the best I can to make the world nicer.The real question is who protects men from women??? Right! Nobody!
The vast majority of sexual assault is by people who know the victim, not random strangers. This is Uber trying to capitalize on fear to sell a more “premium” product they will inevitably charge more for, not actually helping anyone.
Whilst this is most likely true, I still think it’ll provide many anxious women some peace of mind and that might be enough.
I’m sure a lot of anxious Nazi’s got a lot of peace of mind in the early 1940’s too.
I sure a lot of anxipis transphobes got a lot of peace of mind when Trump banned trans people from military service.
Giving anxious people peace of mind it’s the point of segregation. That doesn’t make it right or good.
i see more complaints about misogyny in the comments here than actual misogyny. Which is good, I’m just wondering what I missed
deleted by creator
No, men are upset that there’s nothing they can do to assuage that fear. Imagine if half the world thinks you’re a grenade with a faulty spoon, and there’s nothing you can do to show that you have had your gunpowder removed and cannot explode. You’re just resigned that you will always be viewed as a threat even though you stay far away in public, don’t talk, keep eyes down, ear buds in, stay at home and hardly leave the house. What more can we expect from them? They know some men are bad, just like some women are bad. But no one told men what to do, other than to believe women when they say things, and many women said don’t approach, they don’t need men, they are independent and equal.
What do you believe the average Joe sitting in his house as a hermit should do to fix women being afraid of him when he leaves the house? Genuine question. I don’t see the solution.
deleted by creator
I do all those things though. What else can I do? You love the men in your life, but you fear me, the strange man you don’t know. And I do everything you think a good man should do. You’re still afraid of me. I don’t know what you want from me? Do you want me to kill myself or something? I feel like I’m being gaslit.
At some point you have to realize your making assumptions about everyone and you’re just as biased and flawed as everyone else and you are only seeing through a keyhole.
You think you’ve thought this all through and I promise you haven’t. If you have you can tell me one objective fact that supports your stance. Else you’re just telling me you’re irrationally afraid and cannot articulate why. Because your fight or flight gets triggered when sense of identity gets challenged. It feels like someone if coming at you with a knife. That’s where hard internal questions need to be asked.
deleted by creator
When did I say you make me feel that way? You just put words in my mouth too. We’re miscommunicating.
Yes they are. And your refusal to admit men can feel fear about women is amazingly sexist. Sounds like you think it’s impossible for women to present a threat to a man.
I’ve got an amazing piece of news for you. Not all men are a monolith. Just because the only men you’ve had in your life suck doesn’t mean all men suck.
That’s like saying I ate rotten bread. Thus all bread is rotten.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Most of the comments here seem to be talking about the politics of the gender roles, but no one really seems to be mentioning that Uber should only be used as a very last resort. Call a Taxi, a friend, take public transit. Do not support the VC startup trash that doesn’t pay their
employees“contractors” living wage.Taxis aren’t as safe for women as ride-shares because they’re “anonymous”, from the drivers perspective.
