Lyft is introducing a new feature that lets women and non-binary riders choose a preference to match with drivers of the same gender.
The ride-hailing company said it was a “highly requested feature” in a blog post Tuesday, saying the new feature allows women and non-binary people to “feel that much more confident” in using Lyft and also hopefully encourage more women to sign up to be drivers to access its “flexible earning opportunities.”
The service, called “Women+ Connect,” is rolling out in the coming months. Riders can turn on the option in the Lyft app, however the company warns that it’s not a guarantee that they’ll be matched with a women or non-binary person if one of those people aren’t nearby. Both the riders and drivers will need to opt-in to the feature for it work and riders must chose a gender for it to work.
This feature also has the potential of endangering those drivers. If I were a driver I’d definitely not opt in to a function like this.
I was gonna say, regardless of weather or not it provides more good than bad, it puts the driver in a position to be a target.
Hey could you take me to this super secluded location I need to go to? I’m just gonna hop in the back behind the drivers seat thx
ITT: Men who don’t understand the dangers of living as a woman.
I’m a passing trans woman. I presented as a man for decades of my life and have lived the last handful as a woman. But the amount of times I’ve been groped, harassed, chased or made to feel worried about my physical safety just for existing in the world has skyrocketed. Truly, I know what it’s like to experience society both ways and without question it is worse for women.
I’ve had men sit next to me at the theater, put their hand on my knee and try to feel me up. Ive had men smirk as they “accidently” bump in to me at the grocery to squeeze my breasts. I’ve been followed to my car by men asking what I was doing tonight, who then started yelling and only left because I had pepper spray.
Like, srsly. Every single one of you saying this is discrimination have no clue what it’s like to worry that any interaction with a man you don’t know can quickly turn scary. Getting in to some random guys lyft who will then know where I live, while he has the ability to lock the doors is honestly a super vulnerable position to put yourself in situation.
Yes, mens wages will be harmed, but women are physically being harmed right now. Tell lyft to pay their drivers an hourly wage like they should anyways and STFU about a safety feature.
Couldn’t broke drivers just self-identify as non-binary for more money?
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they would get deactivated so fast though
Easy lawsuit
Thing is. Nonbinary must be allowed to mean literally anything in the way it currently is defined.
I am a man, I identity as a man. However, if I were to Identify as Nonbinary, that would need to pass - I might internally and externally be male, but if I say I don’t identify with being male - it’s sexist to deny me the right to identify that way - because identifying that way is not tied to a specific thing you do.
Or just get really bad reviews
I think a lot of straight cisgender men think that they understand the anxiety women and visibly LGBT+ people face in these sorts of situations. And maybe they understand it at some academic level. But they really don’t truly grok it, and how it affects people’s lives.
I’m a bisexual non binary black person. I do understand the anxiety discriminated groups face, but that’s not an excuse to discriminate even more. We should look at the root causes of the violence and solve those rather than just discriminate even more and just let the issue get worse.
I mean I agree we should look into the root causes. But practically that is a long-term, society-wide project. We don’t even know what the root causes are, let alone how to address them. And moreover that project is not one a ride-share company can address.
So we sometimes have to take less-than-ideal, but more practical measures to address the current situation, right?
I just learned a new word. Neat.
I don’t doubt you had terrible experiences related to sexual harassment, and I’m sorry for you. Nobody deserve this.
But don’t try to muddle the issue here. You have been attacked by people. And you decided that the pertinent group to understand these attacks is their gender, so we need to differentiate on this basis. You could have analyzed it along education level, wealth, apparent race, apparent religion, social persona, zodiacal type, car brand, profession, haircut, or anything else.
But you chose to judge the risk level of people based on their gender. Because you think that, for some reason, you have a much clearer perspective than other people you know litterally nothing about but their gender. It is the exact same thing that makes people discriminate others about the color of their skin, or wealth, or any of the illegal type of discrimination. You are using the same logic, and by extension, you are legitimazing it. There’s a reason discrimination laws do a blanket ban of this kind of thing, and not “some genders/races/others are more protected than others” : it’s because every use of every kind of this arbitrary categorization strengthen every other.
Where are you from that all of this shit happens?
You would think someone who has surely faced so much discrimination would be less of a bigot.
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Cool, now do rape, assault, and sexual harassment like the person you’re responding to was talking about. Your response is tone deaf whataboutism.
Males represented 77% of homicide victims and nearly 90% of offenders.
In other words, male on male crime. What’s wrong with men’s culture to be causing this problem? 🤔🙄
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I’m not sure how blatantly enabling sex discrimination is going to help things here.
Well, then you are just being willfully ignorant because I already typed out why getting in to a cab is scary. Features like this are going to help women choose what type of situation they are putting themselves in. Say whatever you like about women being to use a gun/knife too, but assault and sexual assaults happen, the average man is stronger than the average woman and being in a confined space with a stranger is putting yourself at risk. Women are at a greater risk then men, so should have greater control how they handle those interactions.
“Why getting into a cab is scary” There. Stop right there. You nailed it. Thats it, that’s the whole point. Getting into a strangers vehicle is scary. Period. The end.
Then Lyft should focus on driver quality rather than enabling blatantly illegal sex discrimination.
In what way is this illegal?
1964 civil rights act, discrimination based on sex. Pretty obvious case of it.
Is it illegal to choose your primary care physician based on gender? Maybe I’m not reading this entirely correctly, but why would it be illegal to similarly choose your ride driver by gender?
Wouldn’t discrimination be more if Lyft refused to hire male drivers or something to that effect according to the civil rights act?
why would it be illegal to similarly choose your ride driver by gender?
Because it’s against the law, as it is written. It isn’t a BFOQ for a taxi driver to be male, female, young, old, of any particular race or religion, so yeah, discrimination on those qualities clearly violated the law.
Wouldn’t discrimination be more if Lyft refused to hire male drivers or something to that effect?
Preferentially encouraging discrimination against male drivers is still discrimination, even if male drivers are still allowed on the platform.
I see. It’s not like Lyft isn’t taking on drivers who are men, it just allows women and enby pax the option to set a preference for women and enby drivers.
It would be interesting to see it argued in court that this constitutes as discrimination.
The analogy here is providing an option for a customer at a restaurant to select which race or gender they want serving them. Yes, definitionally, it is discrimination by sex. Especially because no one is given the option to pick a male driver, this will just result in women receiving more ride requests while they’re active and driving.
I can’t see how this would be anything but a slam dunk violation of federal law. Lyft is actively and obviously participating in discrimination on the basis of sex by enacting this policy.
What they SHOULD be doing is raising driver pay and enacting real protections for their passengers which do NOT violate federal law.
That’s not going to look good in the media cycle. Here’s hoping you don’t find the eventual plaintiff among the bigots in this thread.
What would stop me, a man, from claiming this status and requesting female drivers? While this policy was undoubtably made with good intentions, it is ripe for abuse.
Technically nothing. There is no gatekeeping in being non-binary along the lines of presentation. But you claiming this as a passenger does not effect the other passengers who are made to feel safer by the adoption of this option. A fair number of female drivers in the service are also still likely to drive for male clients regularly anyway.
However if all drivers have protections for drivers to shut down abuses by scummy clients who use the opportunity of a temporarily captive audience to be disgusting towards drivers then this overall becomes less of a concern.
Almost all forms of accommodation leave certain paths open for abuse by bad actors. Erring on the side of the person who needs additional help participating in society is usually the more ethical choice because while a bad actor can be a pain there’s usually already laws on the books or policies that can be enacted that allow you to deal with one. For the person seeking accommodation the cost of not having access can mean the world becomes a smaller and/or more dangerous place because of reasons that have nothing to do with them. In some ways that can emotionally be looked at as “letting the assholes win”.
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In general if someone wants to do you harm getting in their car and being transported to a secondary location causes survival rates to plummet. Drivers do have more options by default than their passenger unless the passenger is holding them at gunpoint.
There’s also a stunning number of cases of male Uber and Lyft drivers stalking female clients meaning the threat comes at first point of contact when someone learns where you live.
Well you see, most people aren’t assholes.
assholes are the only reason this feature exists
Yes but the assholes are the ones that tend to take advantage of things like this.
A looot of rules only exist because of a couple assholes ruining it for everybody.
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Most people ARE assholes
Not at all, you just notice the assholes much easier than non-assholes.
It sounds like you need better friends.
Or there’s that old saying, if everywhere you go smells like shit, check your shoes.
In that scenario, I would guess when the driver sees you they wouldn’t let you in the car.
that would work for women but enbies can look like anyone
What abt trans women too actually. U couldn’t discriminate against a trans person just because they don’t pass.
Drivers tend not to be the ones sexually assaulted.
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How is a man asking for a woman driver abuse? Maybe I really fucking hate having to ride with dudebro cabbies and having to humor them with their inane conversations and would prefer a woman driver.
If the man proceeds to abuse the woman I would say we have a problem.
Wouldn’t that make you extra liable for getting sued, because on top of whatever the driver claims you did, you also specifically chose the option you shouldn’t have chosen?
Like it’s basically adding an extra layer of “This guy was clearly a bad actor”
I understand the reasoning and positivity behind this and I do believe it comes from a really good place, it may even be beneficial to customers, but it is gender discrimination in the workplace, whether it leads to mostly positive outcomes for some people or not.
If your employees bring in different amounts of money because you’ve started to split their available workloads based on gender (especially in an industry where gender has no impact on one’s ability to do the job), you’re now likely to decide that due to this trend over time, to discriminate further, prioritising the more popular genders over others when hiring, and when firing, and when deciding wages.
After all, if one gender brings in less profits consistently than the others - because they’re stifled by company policy - why pay them as much? It makes business sense to pay them what they’re worth, and they’re measurably worth less than the other genders, now.
It’s a slippery slope. Well intentioned, but damages equality in the workplace.
Agreed. I 100% understand the rationale, but it has troubling implications. It only takes the one bad guy, but there are 25 other guys driving that night who would either be friendly or happily ignore you the whole ride.
I’d be interested in reading a breakdown of riders and drivers by gender in some representative areas. What I see this doing is, first yes, giving women and non-binary people an increased sense of safety (which I want to stress is still extremely important). But what I also see is an overall decline in service quality for women and non-binary people. Anecdote, not data, but I’ve used Lyft hundreds of times over the years in different cities. I’ve been picked up by maybe 3 people who weren’t [presumably, I didn’t ask] male identifying. On top of this, there is the possibility of certain genders earning more purely on the basis of gender. Remember - this is a bad thing for gender equality.
Something that might be better is an opt-in program with enhanced background checks, mandatory cab cameras designed to be difficult for your average person to fuck with some system for mandatory upload/secure storage of the footage, and other stuff along these lines. Do all these, regardless of gender, and you get a Secure Ride badge. The difficulty is the process and the knowledge you are under MUCH closer scrutiny. The prize is (potentially) access to a bigger piece of that that day’s possible revenue.
I don’t think the above is perfect, but they’re steps towards a better system not based on gender lines among contractors.
Now, if they were treated like honest to god employees, this kind of thing might be easier to implement. Food for thought, Lyft.
Edit: Another thing that I think would be useful in general is a safety rating system on top of the other metrics. Have users provide anonymized data visible on the driver’s profile about how safe they felt their ride was in general. Though admittedly I can see ways this could be abused or made un-useful. But I’ve personally been in situations where I did NOT feel safe, and would have rated them poorly in this area - but otherwise they got me home in one piece, and the reason I felt they were unsafe was they busted their ass all day and were almost nodding off.
In this situation, knowing how ratings play into Lyft and thinking about causes, my rating did not accurately reflect my actual sense of safety. An anonymous safety rating option, with comment, would have been appreciated.
I stopped reading this novel when you claimed you’ve had hundreds of rides but 3 women drivers. That’s not very believable. I’d say 20-30% of my drivers have been female, out of dozens of rides.
I’ve taken probably over 100 Uber/Lyft rides and have never been picked up by someone who presents as a woman. It’s definitely region specific.
This is why I would be interested in a user and driver breakdown across different areas. My anecdote is just that, and could be a function of driver demographics where I am v. where you are (or just a quirk of probability).
Not American so cultures will differ, but I’ve had exactly one female Bolt driver out of my ~40-50 rides. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a female food courier because I don’t always get to the door before they leave. Haven’t seen one though (I mean I’ve seen them around town - just haven’t been delivered to by one).
No idea why it’s like that. Maybe it’s because women are significantly more likely than men to acquire advanced degrees in my country so they don’t need to do gig work as their main source of income? Maybe women just don’t feel safe doing it?
Are they going to call it Cabracadabra?
This is, quite literally, a comically bad idea. This has literally been used as a punchline in fiction.
Been a while since I watched it - remind me how Cabracadabra failed?
It didn’t, Bojack takes a Cabracadabra car in a later season. Todd does sell the company for $8mil though
IIRC Todd wants to let men share in the safe space. Which defeats the entire purpose for the sake of inclusivity.
That’s a neat feature; I wonder why it’s explicitly not available to men (who would prefer a male driver for whatever reason)… I guess maybe they feel that would go against the stated goal of encouraging more women to sign up as drivers, but like… why? If nothing else, men with a preference for male drivers would ensure that more women / non-binary folks could get drivers matching their gender, since as they note there’s far more non-male riders than drivers.
I also wonder if it gives non-male drivers the option to only accept riders who match their gender, which it seems would be the more important facet to encouraging non-male drivers, if safety concerns are the reason they’re not signing up to do so.
Maybe it’s about men preferring female drivers and making it harder for other to get them. Woman may request a female driver to feel safer but men provably don’t do it so much for that reason.
It specifically says it lets riders request a driver matching their own gender, not any gender you want.
don’t I choose my gender?
If you’re non-binary, or not male, then you fall under this policy anyway; it only doesn’t apply to male-identifying males.
But couldn’t someone just claim to identify that way, and abuse the system? This is a really dumb idea.
I mean, sure, any system can be abused, but it’s a lot easier to prove intent when you now have to commit fraud to get in the situation to begin with.
Is it even legally fraud to identify as non-binary when you are not?
How is it fraud to think you’re nonbinary and are we now going to have judges telling you whether or not you’re gay or non-binqry?
Does that mean that non-binary riders are only paired up with non-binary drivers, or are non-binary people and women grouped together?
All we have to go by is what’s in the article, which says:
Lyft is introducing a new feature that lets women and non-binary riders choose a preference to match with drivers of the same gender.
That’s kind of open to interpretation; either they’re calling non-binary a separate gender and matches people accordingly, or they’re really saying “Woman - biological and trans - can choose a preference to match with woman drivers”.
Really? Seems like a bit of a stretch.
Never heard any of my male friends ever comment on the sex of a driver or even have a preference.
I mean all my evidence on this is anecdotal, and yours seems like it’s just conjecture.
Edit: How do men not caring about the gender of their driver reduce the amount of woman drivers for the women who ask for them?
Whereas a lot of women do not feel safe getting into the car of a man they don’t know. While most of the time, it’s safe, but it only takes one time for a woman to end up assaulted or dead. Lyft has already been sued by women who were raped or sexually assaulted by a Lyft driver.
Okay. But how does that point to men wanting women drivers? Which was what I was commenting on.
I was going by how you were saying men don’t seem to ever have a preference. Men may not, but women do.
Men may not, but women do.
That’s my point. Men aren’t asking for this, so how would it reduce the amount of women drivers for women who wish to be passengers?
Men can’t anyway because you can only request your own gender? I’m feeling very confused rn.
If men and “not men” can ask for woman drivers they are “competing” for some drivers and making it harder for each other to get them. If only “not men” can ask for women it is easier for them to get the driver they want. So if men don’t have a strong preference it’s easier for other to get what they are asking for.
I’m not agreeing with them, just trying to make sense of it.
It’s not about men asking for women drivers, it’s about everyone requesting their own gender - that’s what the policy allows. If a woman explicitly wants a male driver, this doesn’t help them, same as if a man wanted a woman driver, or a non-binary driver.
So, just making shit up. Cool.
Since your comment will just look like one link for most people, here is an actual readable list:
- https://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/news/rapist-doncaster-taxi-driver-jailed-for-string-of-sex-attacks-on-disabled-women-4110673
- https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2022-01-08/disgraceful-taxi-driver-rapist-jailed-for-15-years
- https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/cabbies-helped-snare-taxi-rapist-25371415
- https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/rapist-rotherham-taxi-driver-ordered-26575655
- https://www.beds.police.uk/news/bedfordshire/news/2021/december/taxi-driver-jailed-for-1993-rape-after-dna-match-decades-on/
- https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/croydon-taxi-rapist-homayon-ahmadi-b979493.html
- https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2023-06-15/taxi-driver-asked-to-use-customers-toilet-before-raping-her
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Worboys
- https://news.stv.tv/north/taxi-driver-saifal-zaveri-who-raped-and-sexually-assaulted-teens-in-private-hire-handed-jail-term
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1e73ddnw12o
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12423375/Rapist-taxi-drivers-warning-issued-British-tourists-Mediterranean-holiday-hotspot-woman-23-says-a
- https://pembrokeshire-herald.com/64975/ten-years-in-prison-for-milford-haven-taxi-driver-who-raped-passenger/
Most bigots think they have what are “really good” reasons for their bigotry
You could google a dozen articles about men being attacked by women too. Or a person of one race being attacked by a person of another race. This random list of anecdotes proves nothing.
And I could do the same for any given race.
There’s at least three white people in there. My point wasn’t about race. The fact that there are a lot of non white people in that selection reflects the fact that taxi drivers aren’t that well paid and like a lot of poorly paid manual jobs there are quite a few immigrants doing that job. If we then extrapolate from what we know about sex offenders in society we can say that in any particular population there will be a number of sex offenders. Having said that, John Worboys, who is white, seems to be the most prolific of the bunch in there.
They are, having omitted duplicating cases, just the first results for a search for ‘taxi driver rapist.’ Odd that there aren’t any women in the selection, no?
The links you provided seem to be UK centred, so it’s important to remember that in UK law a woman cannot be convicted of rape, only of sexual assault because under the letter of the law rape requires penetration
Hence, if you compare male vs female rape perpetrators you’ll always get an overwhelming majority of men
You’re technically correct about the distinction in law but I think the point still easily stands. Unless you can find me five women taxi drivers charged with sexually assaulting their passengers.
Oh boy, can’t wait until they do that for race.
What an idiotic idea.
Why not let men do the same thing?
Because women have to fear men more than men have to fear women.
Yea but for any normal dude trying to do this as a job this means he gets less rides and less money
Not proportionally though. If the service is less safe for women and non-binary people, then fewer of those people will make full use of the service. So either way, the male drivers probably aren’t getting their custom. The safety features increase the size of the rider pool even as they might exclude some riders from some drivers. Women and non-binary drivers might take over the additional riders, but those drivers might have previously been driving men who are now left for male drivers to pick up. The overall impact to male drivers isn’t as bad as just losing those opportunities.
Sounds like a pretty good trade for human safety.
Would it also be a pretty good trade for human safety if whites and Asians were allowed to choose people of the same race?
I don’t see why white people would need to pick as I’m not seeing any articles about white people being targeted but it’d probably help with some of the violence against the AAPI community.
Oh, so just more racism, then?
That’s not at all the same thing lmao
Yeah because only men can use knives and guns, or be physically strong, or choke someone.
I’m so sick of sexist bullshit like this. Women can be strong, too. Women can be capable of things, too. It’s insulting of you to insinuate otherwise.
Oh fuck off with this disingenuous bullshit. I’m a man and have never had to feel intimidated taking a taxi or Uber.
Maybe as a male passenger, you want to avoid any possibility of being accused of being intimidating.
No, not really.
As a man you are much more likely to be assaulted and murdered than women. As a man, you have much more reason to feel intimidated in a taxi. That said, very few people are assaulted in taxis.
Lmao you calling me disingenuous is fucking hilarious. Fuck off with your thinly veiled sexist beliefs and bullshit virtue signaling.
As if getting in a vehicle with any stranger isn’t always intimidating to some extent.
In case you missed the memo, we’re striving for gender equality, not whatever the fuck you’re peddling.
People like you are literally the problem. You are literally why sexist bullshit like this is allowed to happen. People like you are why no one takes men seriously when they are sexually assaulted, or being abused by their SO.
Just fucking stop.
In case you missed the fucking memo, I am a white man. Look at my post history. Same username on other social media.
You’re unhinged.
It’s not sexist or discriminatory to give Lyft customers a choice of driver gender.
That’s the free market at work, bitch.
So people like me saying customers should have a choice of gender is why no one takes male abuse seriously? You need to have your head examined.
If you hate women, just say you hate women.
You could at least try to hide the incel talking points you’re parroting.“I am a white man” you’re loud, obnoxious, misogynistic, and opinionated in matters you clearly know nothing about. You’re the worst, most stereotypical iteration of a white man.
“It’s not sexist or discriminatory to give Lyft customers [the choice to discriminate based on sex]” I don’t think I even need to say anything about this idiocy.
“That the free market at work, bitch” Sexist language, name-calling, and a complete lack of understanding of what the phrase “free market” means.
“So people like me saying customers should have a choice of gender” Lmao thats not at all what you’re tring to say, even you don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
“If you hate women, just say you hate women. You could at least try to hide the incel talking points you’re parroting.” Projection.
You’re unhinged.
Lol so “I know you are but what am I,” “you don’t know what point you’re trying to make,” and “I don’t even think I need to say anything about this idiocy” is all you’ve got?
We can see your shitty strawman comments about how men have to fear false accusations. You can stop pretending you’re not an incel. Don’t bother replying to me with that weak-ass nothing-burger of a comment.
Sure they can be. Anyone can be a strong asshole. But history has shown men are most commonly the aggressor and disproportionately towards women than other men. Stop being a cry baby and correct men you see who are fucked up.
Sure they can be. Anyone can be a strong asshole. But history has shown
menblacks are most commonly the aggressor and disproportionately towards women than other men. Stop being a cry baby and correct men you see who are fucked up.Excellent point, well made.
The people downvoting you are too stupid to realize they’re agreeing with you.
In case you’re one of those people, their point is that these exact same arguments you’re all making against men have been made against different groups all throughout history and used to justify some genuinely abhorrent behavior. In hindsight, we realize how horrible this behavior was. Most of us try to learn from history, some people just go right back to screeching hate as soon as they can.
So go protest a women’s gym and call it segregation.
Why won’t anyone think of the straight white men!! What about our struggles???
??? Think you replied to the wrong comment, bud.
Check the stastics and come back.
It might have something to do with women being at a higher risk of being abused. But unless you’ve been living under a rock you already knew that. So what are you really asking?
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Higher risk for woman of being abused does not mean that for man of being abused is 0.
I don’t understand why if something bad is more propably to happed to woman we make special exception in the rules just to exclude man of this protection.
Since most men are abused by other men, letting men choose to be matched with more male drivers would actually increase their risk of getting abused.
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Can you at least tell me for what country you want to see a source, so I don’t have to look through and present to you the crime statistics of several countries?
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So you know that most violent crimes are done by men (for the US is a source this for example: https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2020-supplemental-statistical-tables).
But for some magical reason you belief that specifically when driving a taxi everything we know about crime patterns is suddenly thrown out of the window?
Generally there is an underlying concept of “being more evenly matched”. On average women do face more risk of being physically outmatched by men. If another woman became aggressive then their chances of coming out of the altercation would be more “fair” when matching like with like. If you’ve ever been in a good natured but honest wrestling match with the opposite sex you can usually see the power difference and the results can be pretty sobering to a female participant. These dynamics apply to social situations. If you are afraid of the outsized potential of harm someone has towards you then you are more or less forced to behave in an oppressed fashion if they choose to be a jerk because sticking up for yourself comes with the potential of a threat you are not equipped to come out on top of.
The chance of a woman being abused by another woman is also not zero but the level of threat is more on par with what they are physically and psychologically equipped to combat.
You explained that woman are in higher risk. But you did not explain why because woman are in higher risk we should only protect them and not everyone, even if protecting everyone would be less costly.
Creating UI to select driver’s sex is easier than verifing your sex and then if you’re woman showing an option. This is active work hours to disallow man from a protection.
Facilitating allowing the sex or gender selection of a service person at a company is generally illegal because it is a discriminatory work practice. There is however some flexibility to be made that keeps the company safe from greater liability when it is in the interest of safety for women because safety issues on a systemic scale are provable in a court of law.
If anything you should probably be arguing for more services - maybe a safe driver selection based on years of safe driving and spotless customer record which would potentially benefit those with social anxiety or previous trauma. More than one service can exist at the same time after all.
When you argue for a service to be removed from a vulnerable group because of personal spite usually the reaction isn’t favorable. You’d be better off directing that energy somewhere positive than spending on sour grapes.
How many times have you been assaulted or abused by a woman? Because almost every single woman I know can count the multiple times they’ve been abused or sexually assaulted by a man. Just because everyone is capable doesn’t mean everyone is equally likely to commit these crimes.
- Group A is far more likely to be abused.
- We develop a tool to prevent abuse.
- We deny the tool to group B that sometimes needs it, because group A needs it more.
I’m not denying 1., stop assuming I do with cheap arguments like “How many times have you been abused?”. Yes, woman are more likely to be sexual victims.
But my question is why doing 3.? For Lyft it costs basically the same if not less when allowing the feature generally to everyone.
I just don’t see the necessity of it considering the overwhelming majority of drivers are already male. This feature is trying to even out the odds of women getting picked up by other women which just isn’t very likely right now.
To seriously answer your question though, this is a marketing tactic to get more business from women who they can see use the app less than men. They’re a business at the end of the day and it’s a way they’re predicting, whether correct or not, to increase sales.
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You’re trying so hard to miss the point. Just stop.
(numbers pulled out of my ass, but…)
99% of men don’t need it so won’t use it. 99% of the remainder will use it to find a target to harass. Whoever is left might miss out on a great feature, but they’re barely a rounding error.
Personally, I’d love a feature that let me pick a driver that would just shut up.
It’s discrimination when a man does it
/s
I’m a little curious how they stop it.
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Maybe a gay man feels more comfortable with men driving… it’s not that crazy…
Or even a straight one. Doesn’t have to be orientation specific.
What do men have to fear?
Getting shot, stabbed, robbed, beaten, choked, ganged up on, sexually assaulted. Weird, the exact same list that women have to fear.
Oh except men also have to worry about being falsely accused of sexual misconduct, having their names put on the sex offender registry and the entire rest of their lives ruined because no one will believe them.
Choosing the gender of the driver won’t give men any more safety, but it will make a lot of difference for women.
Getting shot, stabbed, robbed, beaten, choked, ganged up on, sexually assaulted. Weird, the exact same list that women have to fear.
Lmao this is just categorically false, and there’s so much fucking data to prove it. I’ve never once felt threatened that a woman would do any of these things to me, but I definitely have feltoke other men would.
Oh except men also have to worry about being falsely accused of sexual misconduct, having their names put on the sex offender registry and the entire rest of their lives ruined because no one will believe them.
While is sadly true, it’s so much less common than sexual misconduct happening to women. It’s so rare in fact that this has never been a fear of mine because I treat every person I meet with respect and I know for a fact that I’m not a creep. Same goes for all of my male friends. If you have a fear that this may happen to you, I think you need to reassess how you interact with women. I would be willing to bet that things you do to women you see as innocent flirting or something when in reality it makes those women extremely uncomfortable.
“Lmao this is just categorically false” I’m sorry, are you saying women are incapable of wielding a knife? Or pulling a trigger on a gun?
“I’ve never once felt threatened that a woman would do any of these things” Oh well if you personally have never experienced such a thing, it must not ever happen to anyone.
/S
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Just fuck off.
“I’ve never once felt threatened that a woman would do any of these things” Oh well if you personally have never experienced such a thing, it must not ever happen to anyone.
Have you looked up how little this happens to men compared to women? Unprovoked, it’s almost non-existent. Again, if you’re being threatening to women then I’m not surprised this happens to you.
Your attempts at attacking my character only demonstrate how incapable you are of making a genuine point.
Ummm excuse me I have never felt threatened by a man, so why are women complaining?
Also, are you going to use 13/90 as an excuse to be racist too?
Ummm excuse me I have never felt threatened by a man, so why are women complaining?
Wait are seriously asking that?
Also, are you going to use 13/90 as an excuse to be racist too?
“Too” as in sexist? Why is it sexist to point out the reality that women are disproportionately violently assaulted by men than men are by women? And what does that have to do with race?
So this feature is matching with someone of the same gender only. That’s the impression this gives. So women with women, nonbinary to nonbinary. Ok. Why are men cut off if that’s the case? How many more lines of code could it possibly be to just implement it for everyone instead of specifically choosing to exclude people? It would be the exact same PR if it was made available to everyone. There’s zero reason this couldn’t just be implemented universally. In terms of this making things safer or more comfortable, couldn’t someone that is a slimeball just lie? The article says you have to choose your gender. What is actually stopping someone from misusing this?
I doubt exclusion of men from this feature has anything to do with it being more work to add men. Hell, it’s actually LESS work to enable it for everyone than it is to add exclusions. Excluding men was a business decision, I’m sure.
Now, I’m in the privileged position of being male, so take this with a grain of salt, but I entirely disagree with the blatant sexism of this feature. I get the purpose, but it feels horribly misguided. Can women not commit violent or sexual crimes? Can nonbinary people not commit violent or sexual crimes? Only men can apparently commit these crimes, according to the people who thought this feature up. Sexual crimes by women, for example, go wildly underreported…Even if they were using statistics to justify how they implemented this feature, they didn’t do their homework.
I mean based on how the exclusion works it’s more about who they want to protect, not who they think will commit crimes. The guy in the previous post said it only does same gender matching when the feature is used, so the only reason there isn’t a male driver option is because there’s no feature for male passengers. (because it’s same gender only)
And you’re saying they didn’t do their homework…while also saying they go unreported, so there wouldn’t be much to research to begin with…
You’re missing the point. Obviously anyone is capable of commiting these crimes, but men overwhelmingly commit them to women than any other circumstance, and they’re almost always much more violent than the inverse. Shit, my friend showed me a TikTok the other day about a woman who rejected a man, then slapped him when he wouldn’t take no for an answer. You know what he did in response? He hit her in the head with a fucking brick.
Instead of instantly going to “this is sexist”, maybe stop and think why it’s even being considered in the first place.
Oh well if you saw it in a tiktok that was totally probably not at all fake, it must be true.
“men overwhelmingly commit them to women than any other circumstance” Go ahead and give me a source for that.
It’s probably due to the saturation of how many male drivers Lyft has. It reports that only 23% are female. While it doesn’t say how many non-binary drivers there are, I doubt they make up more than a few percent. That puts men at ~75% driver share. So the chance of a a female rider, which according to Lyft are about half of their riders, being paired with is vastly smaller than a male rider getting a man.
0.5*0.75=0.375 chance for a man to get a male driver.
0.5*0.23=0.115 chance for a women to get a female driver.
While yes, you can abuse the system, you have to make a more conscious effort about being a “slimeball”. This isn’t necessarily a feature to prevent SH and SA, but more to make drivers and riders more comfortable.
Oh, and about the amount of code: it would be less code, as you do not need to filter and can just start a match-search.
Your calculations don’t hold up. If you get a driver from a 25/75 pool, you are 25 or 75 percent likely to get that gender as your driver, no matter your own gender. So this 0.5 times is not needed.
You seem to have misinterpreted what I was calculating.
The 0.5 is the gender of the user, which is important to calculate whether a user gets their own gender as a driver or not.
Okay, well let me ask a question…
If a person identifies as non-binary, then what fucking business they got asking me my gender?
because someone else being non-binary doesn’t make you non-binary?
they’re not saying no one is allowed a gender, or that other people don’t have genders
they’re saying their gender is a different one beyond the usual two.
like how you don’t have to just choose between vanilla or chocolate because strawberry also exists.
Can a male driver, then, identify himself as non-binary? Say that he does this to avoid all the hassle and possible loss of income caused by a form of workplace gender discrimination.
By the way, you’re not supposed to ask why one is non-binary, right?
yeah you’re not also supposed to ask why someone is a certain race, religion, height, weight etc
and lol at the idea of being non binary is “less hassle”
Yeah and they don’t ask, it’s opt in.
Look, ‘non-binary’, whatever the hell that’s supposed to even mean, basically adds up to ‘I don’t want to tell you what my body structure is’
If someone doesn’t want to reveal their gender to me, hey no problem by me. But privacy is a two way street ya know. What business do ‘non-binary’ people have asking anyone else about their sex/gender?
Non-binary has nothing to do with secrecy? It’s a catch all term for genders that don’t fall under the man or woman category. It pretty much means they don’t identify as a man or a woman but as something else, there are many other identities a person may have
i don’t think it’s hard to divine the meaning of “non” - it means not
and binary means “choice between two options”
put together it means “not one of the two options.”
I believe I already covered your other points (as did the other person replying), but they did reveal their gender.
Consider this: It’s more like
“Did you watch the soccer or tennis match last nigjt?”
“I don’t really like sports, I watched a movie instead”
“why are you keeping it a secret whether you watched the soccer or tennis?”
Its not a secret, there just happens to be more than two choices.
“is your name John or Christopher?”
“neither its David”
“why are you keeping your name a secret!”
etc
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Lately we seem to be going backwards in equality. Men are getting shat on, especially those that haven’t even committed the atrocities they are being punished for.
Why pick and choose who can use the feature to request gender. Make it fair and allow everyone or none.
There’s a lot to unpack here…
But mostly I suggest you learn about the difference in equity and equality.
Equality (what you are arguing for) is treating people the same.
Equity (what this feature promotes) is giving people what they need to be successful.
Equality aims to promote fairness, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same help. Equity appears unfair, but it actively moves everyone closer to success by “leveling the playing field.”
Equity involves trying to understand and give people what they need to enjoy full, successful lives. Equality, in contrast, aims to give everyone the same thing, which does not work to create a more equal society, only to preserve the status quo, in the presence of systemic inequalities.
Given that violent crime in the ride share industry is committed almost universally by men and disproportionately against women, this feature aims to provide equity to support more women as both riders and drivers.
Now, I dare you to apply the same logic to black driver vs. white.
Sure.
Are black drivers disproportionately affected by problems in the ride share industry? Yes. Let’s fix that!
this feature aims to provide equity to support more women as both riders and drivers.
it aims to provide equity, but through a really shitty and half-assed method that results in systemic discrimination
Lyft could be vetting their drivers, taking a hardline approach on drivers which are reported, a trusted driver program, etc, anything that would actually be protecting vulnerable people from abusers, but instead went with the easiest most simple minded approach (which also doesn’t protect any vulnerable men) because they have no problem treating their drivers like shit
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Equity is antithetical to equality. They are oppositional ideals. Either you aim to provide equal opportunity for everyone, or you intentionally limit opportunity to ensure equal outcomes. Democracy and multiculturalism is premised on equality. It seeks to ensure the right of different groups to behave differently and arrive at different outcomes. For example, Asian high-school students spend significantly more time studying and doing homework than any other ethnic or racial group. You can verify these stats yourself by going to the cited source. Unsurprisingly, this group earns more, has higher employment, and lower crime.
Equity, on the other hand, is authoritarian. To use the example above, it means either forcing Asian children to study less, or forcing children of other ethnicities to study more. There is no room for cultural differences or free expression. Equity is only achievable under an authoritarian system, because in order to achieve it, it requires ensuring every child has exactly the same experience in life. The same amount of homework. The same schools. The same friends and family. The same sports and extracurricular activities. The same hobbies. They must study the same subjects in school and universities. It requires complete homogeneity. No modern society wants this, and the use of the term “equity” is deeply alarming to anyone who considers themselves democratic or liberal in the classical sense.
Right. And don’t forget to address the issue of them all being differently situated as a starting condition. You’ll have to kneecap some and put others on wheels.
In this specific situation no one is kneecapping anyone though. For men nothing changes. Some here in the comments are just butthurt that others get a tiny feature to make it more safe for them. While men didn’t have any change to their safety by being able to just have male drivers.
It’s literally just people being uncompassionate and angry over nothing.
For men nothing changes
if male drivers are deprioritized, that results in them getting less riders and being a second class worker. I think we can all agree that the gig economy is shitty enough already and we dont need to add a caste system on top of it
This is something they do to get more drivers. It was a caste system before because the higher probability of women and non-binary people to get assaulted, harassed, even raped was a factor keeping them away from that job.
Lol no.
Equity in this case is providing additional opportunities for education to those who need it.
Equity in this case is providing additional opportunities for education to those who need it.
That would be equality. Everyone given the same opportunity to benefit from resources on the basis of need. Equity would be providing additional resources to people on the basis of race, for example, irrespective of their need. The purpose of which to ensure outcomes are equitable.
Again, no.
Equity is explicitly about need. Equality is irrespective of need. This is literally the definition I gave at the start of this discussion.
Obviously to enact equitable policies, you can’t handle things on a case-by-case basis, because that doesn’t scale. You have to find metrics that correlate with need. The only policies that scale are those that target cohorts rather than individuals.
In the example of school funding, reasonable cohorts can be derived from income level and relatedly (for historical reasons in the US) race.
- An equitable policy would be to provide additional school funding to impoverished communities.
- An equal policy would be to provide the same funding to all communities.
- An unequal policy would be to provide funding in accordance with something inversely proportional to need, like property value.
- An oblivious policy would be to provide funding in accordance with something orthogonal to need, like the day of the week.
In the case of ride-share safety for both riders and drivers, gender is a decent axis for defining cohorts.
Maybe I am missing this in the article but which education is being provided by Lyft?
You gave an example of a school. It’s really obvious that the above poster was addressing the example that you gave.
That wasn’t clear to me but thanks for clarifying. I’ll edit my comment above.
If you are providing additional X to a subset of people it is by definition not equality. The two are jot compatible.
If the two people didnt start in the exact same place then they were already unequal though. So the equity option just makes them closer to equal, equality is not measured in simply ‘how much you get for free’. I work with people with disabilities getting more ‘free’ support than you or I will ever see, are they more equal than the rest of us for it?
That is literally the distinction between equality and equity. There are different words that mean close to similar things.
Why not just not allow men to be drivers? Problem solved, equity maximized.
Neither “equality” nor “equity” involve any amount of equality, equity, fairness, nor justice of any kind. They’re all hot garbage.
What people need is freedom and liberty maximized, and artificial barriers removed. And don’t expect equal outcomes.
Men have it so hard! 😔
Its not punishment. Its making the playing field equal.
It’s not equal if it gives special treatment to one but not both. Why can’t I request a specific driver as a man. What if I don’t feel safe with a woman driver based on stereotypes like the woman and trans passengers are. If they assume the male driver is going to make comments or passes at them then I as a male passenger should be able to assume the woman driver might be bad and get me in an accident.
To be fair, the only thing wrong with it is that it doesn’t have an option for males
And based on another comment, it doesn’t let you pick a driver, rather it lets you pick the same gender as yourself.
So the option probably should be available, and would only allow a male to request another male.
There are thousands of sexual assaults on ride share apps every year which disproportionately affect women so the current system is not equal. We’re talking about the difference between equal outcomes and equal treatment.
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Damn, I’m glad we have you around to unilaterally decide that (and who knew that problems could only ever have one cause?)
[citation needed]
Absolute brickheaded response
Makes sense tho. If you can base the driver selection on stereotypes, why not?
It doesn’t really make sense because he compared women systemically not feeling safe around men with the “haha women bad at driving stereotype”
“Haha men are violent” stereotype is okay, tho?
Statistics and rational thought is not on your side here. You just come off as incredibly unempathetic. Imagine being so butthurt of something not revolving around yourself that you get angry at a feature that will increase the safety of other people.
The law is on his side though. Good to see that your only response is belittlement and insults, though.
How is this equal when men are explicitly excluded…?
Women and non-binary people gain more safety from this. What are men going to gain from a feature letting them have only male drivers?
It’s such an incredible dumb thing to be mad about.
Arguably where is the harm in making it allowable to all for it to be equal?
Arguably, men can gain more safety too, or are you claiming the same can’t happen to men?
What an incredibly narrow sighted view point.
How can men get more safety by this?
So you’re saying women can’t commit the same crimes that men can?
The exact same way women and nb people get more safety. You’re not that special. It goes both ways, the rate may be much higher one way, but it exists the other way too.
What “playing field” are you talking about, what is unequal, and what does this do to supposedly equalize this… playing field?
Violent attacks like sexual assault are disproportionately done my male drivers upon non-male passengers. Why do you not see how this is unequal?
I guess I just have a problem with your phrasing. You make it sound like if we worked to increase the number of sexual assaults that happen to men by women, this would be a solution to the problem.
A “playing field” is an analogy for a field of opportunities, like the job market or access to services like education.
You make it sound like if we worked to increase the number of sexual assaults that happen to men by women, this would be a solution to the problem.
What?
Kinda telling this was your first comment when it’s about women’s safety and the rising number of abuses women have faced as passengers from the men driving.
Were you trying to miss the point or are you just naturally dumb?
Kinda telling this was your first comment when it’s about
women’swhite’s safety and the rising number of abuseswomenwhites have faced as passengers from themenblacks driving.Go on then, show us your racist study published by a reputable source.
I could show you a study showing that black people commit every single crime on earth and it wouldn’t make disceiminating against them any less racist.
You seem to be the only person arguing for that though.
Go on then, show us your sexist study published by a reputable source.
The person your replying to isn’t actually commenting on race, you just failed to understand their point.
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This is the dumbest take I’ve seen. What are you even getting on about. This is just rancid bigotry veiled as concern.
What are you even basing this on? Are you afraid of black people? Or do you just hate the LGBTQIA+ community and women? Or are you still privileged as one of those two that you don’t use Uber and are just spreading shits because you can?
Like it or not, Lyft is helping customers discriminate on the basis of gender. It may not have come from bad intentions, but it could have bad consequences. I’m not sure which genders will be less popular as a result of this, but they may have a harder time generating an income from Lyft. (If this feature takes off.)
I’m not saying that this feature necessarily has no place. I can empathize with people wanting to pick the gender of their driver, but it may not end up being fair for everyone.
Well getting harassed is also not fair.
Also this probably will have an unintended consequence of letting the popular gender choice(s) earn more, as there is less supply and more demand than if the whole driver pool was available.
So it’s reasonable to think that if your driver is a male, you will be harassed (and that if your driver is a female, you will not)? That doesn’t enable misandric bigotry in any way whatsoever. I mean, everybody knows that men are the ones who cause problems and women are the ones who suffer them.
My guess is that women don’t prefer to pay a higher price to get home safely but that’s just reality they live in. Also it’s an inconvenience to wait longer for a ride so why would they choose that just to spite men?
Also they (women) can probably decide from experience if they usually get harassed by men or someone else and choose to opt in to this program based on that. If it’s nonsense then they won’t do it because why would they.
Also only 23% of Lyft’s driver are women (based on a super fast search) so this actually happens to also help that issue as well indirectly as their demand grows.
If you could empathize, then you’d understand how shitty of a sentence, “WhAt abOUT BlAckS,” is. Or, “It’s okay to ignore the problem 'cause it’s not fair to men.”
Really think about it. Guys have no choice but to not have the option. What is taken away? This is the same BS as, “Why do we need a lactation room? MEN can’t use it.” “How come women get days off for their PMS-related things, I don’t menstruate.”
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So I’m guessing affirmative action is discrimination?
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This is just getting butthurt for an absolutely silly reason and simultaneously showing no empathy at all.
Let’s get the facts down:
-
For men nothing changes.
-
Women are disproportionately affected by sexual harassment and assault by male drivers.
-
Women and non-binary people get the option to use a probably paid feature to have drivers of their own gender because the companies want more customers and women and non-binary people don’t use their service since they are scared.
The reaction here in the comments isn’t “omg I didn’t know it was so unsafe for some people to use these services” or “good for them to make more people feel safe”. No.
The reaction is: “Why do THEY get a feature I don’t?? I demand to also get this, they shouldn’t have something I can’t have!! Sexist misandrists!”
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How is that morally wrong? It does not hurt anybody and makes some people feel more safe.
Marry me. Feels like so many people here miss the point.
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You’d probably defend a Nazi getting punched
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There it is
Well, it is a valid argument. Since women are often uncomfortable around men they don’t know, it does seem fair to give them an option to avoid male Lyft drivers. What if someone is uncomfortable with a black driver? It is a similar situation.
Honestly, if I were a woman I would possibly use this feature. Personal safety goes above any moral ideals that I may be tooting around. That’s why I’m kind of split about this. People should be able to feel as safe and comfortable as possible, but male drivers shouldn’t feel like they’re less preferred by a portion of Lyft’s users.
You’re talking in circles. The problem is because men are the largest perpetrator, well also being the biggest benefactor of being a man. They are literally on both ends. Women on the other hand are largely targeted by men for crimes of various sorts, well also not benefiting from the patriarchy.
Hell they have to have separate train cars for women in japan because men can’t keep their hands to themselves.
There is nothing societal that benefits black drivers. That’s exactly the point. There is no equity here. If I’m a black driver, chances are I’m already on the back foot. People might cancel their rides once they see me, or bring cops into play and have other violence brought against me. Remember that one black dude in Central Park who was bird watching and had a woman start accusing him of stuff.
Don’t put women further on the back foot. Don’t put persons of color on the back foot. Cis white men already have the advantage in so many ways.
It’s not funny anymore.
I’m just here for my popcorn and comment entertainment. Which did not disappoint
Cool, now both Lyft and Uber need a “no extra conversation” option too. I don’t want to talk to the driver when I use rideshares, I hate the incessant small talk they want me to be a part of. I know some people might like it or at the very least not mind it, but I absolutely can’t stand it 9 times out of 10. Give me the option to specifically not have it please.
Last time I used Uber I remember seeing this feature as an option.
Wow, was not aware although after just looking it up, evidently it is only for ‘premium’ rides and not standard. As if having someone not talk to you should cost extra. 🙄
That’s really bullshit. This result will be that every male drivers will become non binary to not be discriminated by the customers.
This is not because some suffer that it is correct to punish an entire gender for that.
