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- technology@lemmit.online
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- technology@lemmit.online
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It seems like the system allows women and non-binary people to request female or non-binary drivers.
This was put in place because of several sexual assault and harassment suits against Uber due to their male drivers assaulting women.
Now there are men suing to force women to accept rides from people they feel unsafe with because “not all men”.
But enough men have. Too many men have.
It’s a shame that male drivers lose out in this situation, but I think the safety of the customer outshines the petulant demands of a few drivers.
Please could you define the threshold for “enough men have”, just so we can use it for other causes of discrimination?
Enough that there are lawsuits being filed against Uber for negligence in screening drivers, following up on assault complaints, or implementing safety measures to stop assaults by their predatory drivers.
https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/uber-sex-assault-lawsuit.html
Enough that Uber saw fit to implement a system that would allow people who feel vulnerable to seek drivers who they feel safer around. This is Uber, the company that calls its drivers ‘contractors’ to get around employment laws and who puts all of the onus of responsibility on their drivers and passengers so they can try and keep their hands as clean as possible. That Uber thought that enough people were being assaulted by their drivers to actually do something about it.
But you weren’t actually asking for a real answer. You just wanted to score your little points.
I’m not against a policy like this in all cases, because men are obviously going to commit many times more assaults than women. Very controversial take among some but separate male and female spaces should exist, as long as they are part of community resources though, not corporate branding shit, not reactionary political groups (duh, but whatever you guys all have law enforcement infested with this rather than LEO cracking down on it). This is however collective punishment against men who have already been forced into gig work, particularly migrant dudes with families they send money back to (Uber loves taking advantage of dubious situations this is a way that the US exploits third world labor power). What you’re describing is a company famous for doing illegal shit adding a dumb filter instead of actually pursuing harassment and assault reports. Doesn’t that score a point against the policy if they threw it out as a red herring? He’s right that a shitton of marginalized men are catching strays here.
If you think Uber is this really epic progressive company btw they famously had to delete a post where they used customer data to show how many people experienced a one-off hookup followed by a walk of shame on Valentine’s Day. Doesn’t that just make you so excited? I will be delighted to see what new kinds of eugenics experiments that you let tech companies run on all of you & your families!!!
Should I even bother raising the question of whether a company ought to dictate social policies like this? Don’t want to trigger too much cognitive dissonance at once. People on here are too fragile. Like lol the implication that men won’t rape other men or it’s not worth considering. Typical. Of course no nonbinary person would rape either. Believable premises.
Oh and on top of all that, women and “enbies” are supposed to accept worse service for a lower likelihood of being raped. Thank you so much Uber!!! Awesome company!!! Race filter next!!! /s /s /s
Hell what is even the point of a society where you know that Uber banning a driver is the most punishment the rapist will receive if they’re not brown enough for the cops to give a shit. How the fuck does anyone take this kind of thing seriously from the company that just straight up ignored laws everywhere and got away w it i will never understand
So the answer is to remove the option and let women fend for themselves?
Who cares if it’s a marketing decision, or comes from an absolute festering hole of a company? Stopped clocks and all that. This feature is obviously desirable if women are using it. And again, I think the safety of one group of people outweighs the wallets of another.
No I just said that this policy could be acceptable if it was being implemented as an industry-wide regulation by the state. This would require a non-bourgeois controlled state. Don’t deflect from my point that this is being thrown out by Uber to distract from them failing to respond to user abuse reports and the women have to accept lower quality service (fewer available drivers even if prices are equalized to make up for that by the algo and do we know how their proprietary algo works or will work going forward?) to utilize it.
Since this is being challenged in courts as OP’s post shows it’s even more of a nothingburger from Uber…
Aww snap you got owned 😂
“Enough” is a statistically significant delta between the rates of men assaulting women and women assaulting men. Once that is identified, remedial action is justified.
It would not be discrimination if they just allowed all drivers and riders to choose the specific gender designation they want to work with. I.e. allow whatever gender riders to choose whatever gender drivers they accept and vice versa. Most won’t use it and those that do will have a reason to do so. Maybe male drivers don’t want female riders to avoid even the possibility of accusations? etc
It may seem like a good idea, but it’s still wrong if you really think about it. Just take a look at how this sounds:
It would not be discrimination if they just allowed all drivers and riders to choose the specific race designation they want to work with. I.e. allow whatever race riders to choose whatever race drivers they accept and vice versa. Most won’t use it and those that do will have a reason to do so. Maybe black drivers don’t want white riders to avoid even the possibility of accusations, [and some white riders won’t feel safe with a black driver]?
Would that be OK?
How often do women drivers randomly accuse men for that to be an issue? And wouldn’t that be exploited more by misogynistic men than misandristic women? These types of problems are always one-sided. I don’t see a way around this besides using a little discrimination to stop the huge discrimination and sexual harassment from happening.
For some reason I got my post removed last time I mentioned this, but what if Uber had a feature that let you select the race of your driver because “some riders don’t feel comfortable with black drivers”. That would clearly be wrong right?? It’s the same thing but with gender I don’t know how people were defending this originally.
This is a fascinating issue and let me bring in an international perspective. In Tokyo, Japan, there are some train cars that are only for women and girls. This is because real numbers of men will grow women and girls on the train. Now the best solution would be to arrest and lock up all of the gropers. For various reasons, that’s somehow difficult to do. In the meantime, we have these cars that are only for women and girls. So, do you take away the cars and tell those women and girls that they just need to be victims? Is that really what you want to say to them and their families?
Of course, Japan does not have the same constitution as the United States, so the legal aspect is different. But that’s why I’m seriously asking the above question. What’s the moral answer given the above set of facts?
Now I don’t have any data on Uber. Is there actually an increased risk with male drivers? I haven’t seen any data, but I haven’t looked for any data either. I’m not sure how similar this situation is with that one.
It’s a fair point to bring up. An even more basic example is just the concept of female locker rooms and bathrooms, or “lactation rooms” in airports and schools. Those spaces are not created specifically with protecting women in mind, but that is still an important part of why they exist. Here is why I think those examples (and female only traincars) are ok and being able to request the gender of your driver isn’t: there is no harmed party in the above examples. If some women move to a special train car, there will be that much more space in the other train cars for men. As long as the number of female-only train cars is set properly, nobody is harmed or even slightly inconvenienced. On the other hand, if drivers cannot find work because riders are requesting only women that is clearly harmful.
I’m not sure if you are familiar with racial segregation in the United States but ultimately it was struck down by courts on the conclusion that, despite the claims of services for whites and blacks being “separate but equal”, they were in fact discriminatory against black people. Whenever you are segregating or treating genders/races differently, you have to be extremely careful that you are not harming anyone.
Is there a race that is statistically more violent then the others? So no base for excluduing them. But males are significantly more violent than other genders.
So there is your difference.
Is there a race that is statistically more violent then the others?
…
…
…White supremacists use this argument verbatim against certain ethnicities. It’s literally the poster child for statistic-fluffed racism.
Do I have to link the meme or are going to figure this out on your own?..
In the United States, black people are statistically far more violent than for example white people, to use your terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States
The per-capita [homicide] offending rate for African-Americans was roughly eight times higher than that of whites, and their victim rate was similar
Now, there are various socioeconomic factors at work here and most of them point back to historical and present mistreatment (mainly by white people), but setting all that aside- if you just want to get an uber and you are worried about being assaulted by driver, those underlying causes are irrelevant.
Again - I do not think Uber should let you filter by race - that’s clearly wrong. But I think filtering by gender is just as invalid.
Difference is the racially biased crime statistics produced in the US are the direct result of racially biased law enforcement and judicial systems, whereas the significantly higher rate of sex crimes and violence by men vs women is a verifiable fact substantiated by similar statistics in countries around the world. One is a lie, the other is not.
Are you suggesting that over 80% of white homicide victims go unreported, or that over 80% of black homicide victims are made up by law enforcement, or that over 80% of black homicide victims are actually victims of white-on-black crime? No combination of those three seems remotely plausible.
US crime statistics are unreliable specifically in regard to race due to the extremely well documented presence of organized white supremacist groups in US law enforcement and the judicial system, you might want to do some reading and rethink what you consider plausible before attempting to discuss the topic
That’s weak as hell. There is no credible evidence that completely refutes an 8x overrepresentation in homicide crime rates and victim rates. Now if you want to make an argument that this is really a division of class and not race, and the numbers only differ along racial lines because black people suffer much more economic hardship, sure i think thats a valid argument. But the numbers are still what they are. Over 12,000 black people died by homicide in the US in 2023 and they weren’t all killed by the Klan and police officers.
Cool numbers you got there
The other is also a lie if you consider the stigma against men for reporting sexual assault and abuse by women.
Statistics are only as good as the data included.
Underreporting of sex crimes by male victims of male assailants might possibly skew the ratio slightly, but underreporting by male victims also applies to male assailants, available evidence overwhelmingly indicates that men are more likely to commit sex crimes and violent crimes, and unlike biased racial statistics there’s no evidence whatsoever for the same sort of individual and institutional motive to skew them. We have outright racists in law enforcement verifiably & deliberately targeting minority communities, we have no evidence to suggest similar for men vs women in regard to law enforcement/crime stats.
You don’t get it, do you?
So long as there is a stigma on males reporting, or emotionally opening up, about assaults by females, then not a single gender statistic can be trusted, or used as an objective measure.
“Available evidence”. Available evidence. Available is the key word.
There’s a big difference between saying that violent/sexual crimes committed by women are underreported and claiming that the gap in reporting would come anywhere close to making up the difference in rates of commission of these crimes between men and women, the former is verifiably true and the latter is extremely not verifiable and almost certainly not true
How much of that is due to conviction rates? As a middle-aged white guy I can get away with shitloads more than any black man.
Some of it, I’m sure, but the fact that black homicide victim rates are in line with black conviction rates does point to a higher underlying level of crime. The vast majority (80-90%) of homicides of white and black people are white-on-white and black-on-black.
Not sure what you’re saying with that last sentence. Hardly surprising that violence is intraracial when violence almost always comes from someone you know.
My point is that it shows the homicide conviction rates for both black and white people are both roughly what you would expect, based on a) the homicide victimization rates and b) the percentage of crime that is intrarace. Setting aside the biases of the judicial system, if X number of black people were killed by homicide then you can get a pretty good guess of how many black people committed homicides. The fact that this expected number of black homicide victims lines up with the number of black people convicted is a good sign, at the very least, that black people are not being convicted for crimes committed by white people, and therefore the ratio of homicides per capita between black and white people is roughly accurate.
I used to drive for Uber.
They have very predatory and anti human behaviors built in - like making sure drivers have no good way to communicate with other driver so they can’t form a union.
Real contractors can negotiate their pay and working conditions, and real employees get training and usually know who their co-workers are.
Uber deliberately picks the worst of both categories when dealing with their drivers. Drivers are required to manage and pay for their own licence, vehicle, registration, maintenance, and fuel, while also having no training, no contact with other drivers, and no ability to negotiate pay or working conditions. Drivers can also be removed (fired) at any time without reason.
It took me over 6 months to break even on setup costs, not including the cost of the car I already had. No-one is using Uber as a way to get slightly more money when commuting with setup costs like that, and Uber knows it. “Uber” was always going to be a taxi service; just one that treats its drivers worse, pushes most costs onto the drivers, and funnels money to shareholders as fast as possibly while providing the minimum possible service.
Uber is a corporation with no empathy, and will happily crush all of its workers for slightly more profit. I will never again work for them or use any of their services.
Uber is horrible to its drivers, but as a former taxi user, I’ll say this system beats the terrible customer service by independent taxi drivers by far. Too much illegal shit was happening with yellow cab taxis in my city, which are non-existent with ride-sharing services. It’s unfortunate that someone has to bear the social cost of this service. From a consumer POV, I’d rather it be them.
Never heard of Cory Doctorow until a few weeks ago, now it seems like I come across another piece of his works every day, and every time it is spot on. I need to start following him more closely.
Can you elaborate on what the “setup costs” are? You say you’re excluding the cost of your vehicle because you already had it and I would’ve thought that was pretty much all you need to get started. Isn’t that the point, anyone with a car can do it?
I’m in Australia, so requirements may differ.
I was required to get
- an operator accreditation for my car to be used
- a driver accreditation so that I can drive
- a vehicle inspection to prove the vehicle is safe to use
- different (more expensive) car registration to register the car as a rideshare vehicle
- increase in compulsory third party insurance to match the registration
- increase in car insurance for have a vehicle used for commercial purposes
In total, it was over $2,000 AUD and more than 1 month before I was permitted to take my first trip. With no training, no income guarantee, and no guarantee that I wouldn’t be immediately
firedbanned without cause.Uber takes a 30%* cut first, then out of the remainder I had to pay 10% GST, then all car maintenance and fuel.
It was many hours of driving to break even. Adding the cost of food eaten while taking lunch away from home, I’m not sure I ever actually broke even. I certainly didn’t earn anything close to a living wage.*number is out of date and from (poor) memory. Do not quote this number.
Race to the bottom
It’s segregation. Its pre-judging people based on their gender. And even if you can justify to yourself that it’s okay to discriminate against men… What about trans people? Non-binary people? What happens when some straight woman complains that aesbian driver made them uncomfortable?
It was a great idea to protect women until anyone takes 5 seconds to think about it.
I’m willing to bet that, pound for pound, trans people are least likely to commit that sort of crime for the simple fact that they’re usually the targets of sexual harassment and objectification, and that non-binary people also tend to be a whole lot more woke about these things, judging by the many trans-inclusive spaces I’ve crawled both virtually and IRL. They can and do perpetrate sexual harassment, but overall, the circumstances for these groups are different for that to be a major factor.
Wow you’re making a whole hell of a lot of assumptions and generalizations about trans and non-binary folks.
What exactly are we trying to get women away from here? People with Y chromosomes? Well, that includes trans women. People with testosterone? Well that includes trans men. People with muscles? There’s significant overlap between the most muscular woman and the least musclar man. People wearing men’s clothing? Well then that opens up conversations about cis cross dressers and drag artists, let alone greater discussions about clothing and fashion trends over time, let alone non-binary people.
You cannlt execute this solution without hand waiving away some amount of bigotry and prejudice. That is because it is a bigoted and prejudiced idea.
Wow you’re making a whole hell of a lot of assumptions and generalizations about trans and non-binary folks.
Am I? I just saw two videos of trans women relating their sexual experiences after transitioning, and that’s just been in the past week. Imagine what I’ve seen and heard throughout the years in various other spaces. I certainly don’t think I’m pulling it out of my ass if that’s what you think.
What exactly are we trying to get women away from here?
If I were to put it bluntly, cis straight men, but not exclusively. There are some trans men and some lesbians with internalized misogyny to beware, but these groups don’t generally have a prominent presence in society. You can’t tell me with a straight face that you’re comparing 50% of the population with about 0.5% and 5%, respectively, to argue your point. And even then, it’s like 90% men drivers or something like that.
People with testosterone?
Umm, yeah, I guess. Testosterone is one hell of a drug and a major driver of sexual behavior in many animals. We can discuss the male reproductive strategy if you want, and I can give you several examples where some seriously rapey shit is perpetrated by the males.
That is because it is a bigoted and prejudiced idea.
Yep, it’s a little prejudice to stave off a hell of a lot of sexual assault, and I think the tradeoff is justified if we see positive results. The consequences are negligible for men and life-altering for women. Is that wager not enough to reconsider this for you?
Your arguments sound incredibly familiar.
“Not all trans women are bad, but enough if then are predators that we need to ban them from women’s restrooms and sports!”.
“Not all Mexicans are bad, but the ones who are trying to cross the border into the US are criminals and need to be stopped!”
“I’ve heard of a white woman who said she was raped by a black man, and that’s why we need segregation!”
“Women are so delicate and helpless that we need special rules to protect them!”
The consequences are negligible for men
They are if you assume that the services would be “sperate but equal”. Wait a minute… Where have I heard that one before?
Racists love to talk about crime statistics and claim (erroneously) that they could eliminate 50% of the crime by removing 13% of the population. Is it worth the cost of dehumanization? Is it worth sewing divisions within society? Is it worth just brushing marginalized groups aside and pretending they don’t exist?
This program is all of the red flags of segregation and prejudice. It always ends the same way, every time it’s been tried. There’s no way that you can safely slice up populations of people without leading to the same issues that it always brings.
Are they, though? I feel like you’re pulling some shit that doesn’t quite fit, and it’s not the first time I’ve heard this accusation being thrown around in an effort to subvert the argument without paying close attention to what is being said.
None of your examples is based on reality because none of them follows real-world crime statistics. None of them is based on an incredible backlog of proceedings that requires an adjustment to an app to create a safety mechanism. Rather, they all describe a situation to weaponize society against an already-marginalized group. Here, the inverse implementation of the filter actually becomes the weapon and creates the very problem that you’re talking about!
This program is all of the red flags of segregation and prejudice.
Spare me the pearl clutching. None of these measures comes from misandry or prejudice, but rather actual violence that keeps happening. This is unlikely to generate that sentiment against men for the same reason that women-only wagons in public transport haven’t generated any misandry, but rather drawn attention to a common form of sexual violence in public that affects everyone, including other men.
So, please, spare me the poor comparisons and misrepresentations.
I already gave an example of how real world racists love to use crime statistics as arguments to justify their bigotry. You referencing (without citing) crime statistics is to meaningful.
But even if we look at statistics, the majority of sexual assault cases are between people who know each other, not random strangers.
This isn’t about protecting anyone. It’s about Uber selling women on the concept of safety and charging a premium for it, and they are leveraging a culture war in the process.
And I told you that they don’t apply because it’s disingenuous. They’re your contrived examples that you’re trying to force to subvert what I’m saying and frame me in some light with historical baggage that doesn’t apply.
But even if we look at statistics,
Yup, looking at your link, it says so right there: “the majority of offenders are male”. Then it lists a whole bunch of other factors that have nothing to do with gendered violence in the context that we’re talking about.
the majority of sexual assault cases are between people who know each other, not random strangers.
We’re talking about upwards of 2,300 lawsuits between strangers in a cab as a result of 400k other reports submitted at a rate of about 1 per 8 minutes for two years. Do you see how what you’re saying doesn’t fit here either?
This isn’t about protecting anyone.
Of course not, this is about Uber covering its ass for doing absolutely nothing about sexual assault and trying to come up with a corporate solution.
It’s about Uber selling women on the concept of safety and charging a premium for it
Are they charging extra for this feature?
and they are leveraging a culture war in the process.
The fact of the matter is that these men suing Uber for discrimination are pearl-clutching and are the ones fueling the culture war. These self-described men in the comments arguing against letting women choose the gender of their driver are pretending this is somehow comparable to racism, and are making fake comparisons to drive a narrative. You did that.
This is a complex situation, but I enjoy seeing Uber get sued regardless
Same. Lyft stole my time and gas money refusing to pay me for a ride I gave someone when I was driving for them
Heh. You think your time & money is your own. How’s that working out, citizen?
I think you meant serf.
Serfs had it better, NGL.
Just add a men-only option. Problem solved.
I mean, you’d think that would make sense, right?
But try arguing that if Tinder adds a visually verified height filter, it should also add a visually verified weight filter.
That assumes that women drivers are and can be a problem, but are they? Highly doubt it. They’re probably the least problematic as far as sexual assault goes, which is the whole reason for this.
Women are roughly ~60% as likely to commit IPV assault or sexual assault or stalking as men, so… using that as a proxy, yeah, its less, but its not insignificant.
As the other reply to your comment mentions, I’m a guy, I have been both physically and sexual assaulted by women.
… Do I not exist?
There are roughly 60% as many male victims of female IPV violence/sex assault as there are women who are victims of men.
Thats millions of people, in both categories.
https://www.cdc.gov/intimate-partner-violence/about/index.html
IPV is common. It affects millions of people in the United States each year. Data from CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) indicate:
About 41% of women and 26% of men experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime and reported a related impact.A Over 61 million women and 53 million men have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
IPV starts early and continues throughout people’s lives. When IPV occurs in adolescence, it is called teen dating violence. About 16 million women and 11 million men who reported experiencing intimate partner violence in their lifetime said that they first experienced it before age 18.
But hey, I know not all women are like what I’ve been through, from more than one woman.
Took a lot of therapy to get a hold of the PTSD, but maybe one day I’ll feel comfortable enough to seriously date again.
In the meantime, yeah, I am at least healed enough that I don’t personally feel the need to request only male uber drivers…
~60% as likely to commit IPV
But that’s the thing, people in these comments keep bringing up statistics that are only tangentially related. IPV requires a level of trust and intimacy that’s not present at the job. Most of the schemes that I know women do in abusive relationships can’t exactly be pulled off from the driver’s seat with a stranger.
feel comfortable enough to seriously date again.
Right, and that’s in the context of dating.
The stats are meant to be illustrative of the fact that women are also capable of, and do, commit assault and sexual assault in large numbers.
You’re just missing the point.
In your other reply you mention a magnitude of difference as being important, after asserting the one that exists is surely so massive that its not a problem.
Ok here’s an attempt at giving you that magnitude, ah, but, now its not precise enough, the situations are too dissimilar.
The point is women can be, and certain women are dangerous, and the extent to which that is common is not trivial, and is not hugely lopsided toward men just always doing all the bad things at an order of magnitude difference, 1 to 10 or 1 to 100, its more like a 1/3 to 2/3 difference.
You opened with highly doubting that women can be dangerous.
Uh, they can be.
They are ‘somewhat less dangerous than men’.
Not ‘so much far less dangerous than men as to be statistically negligible’.
Do you want me to pull stats on how many women have ever gotten arrested for a violent crime?
That number is not 0.
What I am getting for asking various AIs this question is that in the US, the overall crime.rate is going down, but since the 90s, the proportion of violent crimes committed by women is going up.
This data is not like, easily accessed, it would be an significant academic research task to attempt to properly answer this question, so, I’m ok with using an AI with sources for an ballpark estimate.
I’m asking duckduckgo’s duck.ai, if you want to check this.
In 2023, we’ve got ~880k violent crimes committed by men.
In 2023, we’ve got ~320k violent crimes committed by women.
Assuming thats one crime per person, we assume US population is 350 million, and its a 5050 population sex split, we get:
Chance a US man committed a violent crime in 2023: 0.0050%
Chance a US woman committed a violent crime in 2023: 0.0018%
Proportion of 2023 violent crimes committed by men: 73 1/3%
Proportion of 2033 violent crimes committed by women: 26 2/3%
Or, put back into my original phrasing…
Women are 30% as likely as a man is to commit any violent crime.
Which is, ok, half of what I said with IPV stats, half of ~60%.
But again, we are at proportional difference levels, not orders of magnitude difference levels.
So what this means, what Uber and Lyft are doing, is something like allowing discrimination against all their male drivers, so that the chance a woman gets assaulted goes down from ~0.005% to ~0.002%.
Something roughly in that ballpark.
Thats what you call massive losses for a mostly innocent group, for basically imperceptible gains, in comparison to the losses sustained by the group.
Women choosing only women drivers do not become 1100% (10x) or 100% (2x) or 50% (1.5x) safer by doing so.
They only become about ~0.0032% (~1.0032x) safer.
If you routinely did things because of that level of safety margin improvement, you can justify basically any decision at the level that it will make you 3 thousandths of a percent safer.
Yeah, these are estimates, they’re far from perfect, but this is the ballpark we are in.
Its ludicrous, from a mathematical standpoint, to attempt to justify this behavior. It is irrational. It is paranoid.
Maybe if you’re ubering to work every single day of the week, ok sure it becomes a cumulative thing, at that point you’d save money with a personal chauffeur, so that’s also kind of ridiculous.
women are also capable of, and do, commit assault and sexual assault in large numbers
Those statistics being thrown at me are for women in relationships, not two strangers in a cab.
Ok here’s an attempt at giving you that magnitude, ah, but, now its not precise enough, the situations are too dissimilar.
Wait, somehow pointing out the imprecision is a problem? Why isn’t the imprecision the problem instead?
You opened with highly doubting that women can be dangerous.
We’re talking about sexual assault. If you have the numbers of sexual assaults committed by women drivers towards passengers, I’d love to see them. Even better if they’re compared to the men drivers.
its more like a 1/3 to 2/3 difference.
Not for sexual misconduct, that’s for violence in general, so it’s imprecise. I’m not denying those numbers for what they are.
They are ‘somewhat less dangerous than men’. Not ‘so much far less dangerous than men as to be statistically negligible’.
You talk like you got the numbers. Let’s see them.
Do you want me to pull stats on how many women have ever gotten arrested for a violent crime? That number is not 0.
Great, we’re not talking about that.
What I am getting for asking various AIs this question
Please don’t. I use AI too, and I know firsthand this is not something you can trust them with.
You’re just missing the point.
By the looks of it, so are you. You’re talking about general violence when I’m not.
The only thing I will concede is the frequency of these assaults relative to the number of uneventful rides. And yet, people here would rather have thousands of cases of sexual assault by doing nothing about it because of some ill-perceived reframing. I swear the men in the comments are talking about this as if it’s some Jim Crow law being put in place when it’s not. It’s nothing but pearl-clutching.
Yes. Of the two, they are the least likely sex to sexual assault. That’s not the flex you think it is.
Does that mean they’re never problematic? Not a problem worth preventing with a simple search filter? A search filter they already have the inverse of? One they could implement before the weekend?
I personally know 2 guys who’ve been sexually harassed and assaulted by women. One who was actually raped by a woman. It happens less often, sure. But saying that it’s not worth doing the bare minimum to prevent it, is dumb.
That’s not the flex you think it is.
At a ratio of about a magnitude difference, I think it is. For every one woman committing assault, several men are doing the same.
Not a problem worth preventing with a simple search filter?
The main issue is the weaponization of that filter. The original purpose is addressing a problem as a band-aid, and the inverse is handing out a loaded gun. It’s not foolproof, but by the looks of these thousands of lawsuits, it’s better than nothing.
I personally know 2 guys who’ve been sexually harassed and assaulted by women.
What makes you think I haven’t been assaulted by women a couple of times? I’ve been sexually assaulted by men a whole lot more since I was 16. What’s your point? I know about 10 women who have suffered sexual and physical violence, and I know about four men who have suffered the same. We can’t deny this is a lopsided issue that affects a whole lot of people that we all know.
Your argument is literally “Since one problem is worse, it justifies actively avoiding doing anything about the other.”
I think you got it backwards.
Then it seems you failed to explain yourself clearly.
That only solves the problem if there is an equal demand for both. Assuming there isn’t, the male drivers still have a claim for lost income as a result of their gender.
It solves Uber’s problem, in that Uber set up a feature to favor one sex.
Men drivers can’t blame the public if there isn’t as much demand for their services.That doesn’t make any sense. Can male strippers sue that there’s not as big demand for them as there is for female strippers? I don’t think so. (This is just a metaphor, I have no idea how big the male stripper business is, but that’s not the point, I’m sure you could come up with a similar example where gender is an advantage, becasue there’s simply smaller demand for the other gender).
Gender is a bone fide job requirement for strippers. That’s not the case for taxi drivers.
The gender “requirement” for strippers is based on customer preference, if Uber customers prefer a gender for drivers then the same is true here
The gender you’re attracted to isn’t a choice or a “preference”.
We’re not discussing preference as in attraction, we’re discussing the preference of women customers for women drivers due to the significantly greater incidence of violence and sexual assault commited by men specifically towards women, which is also not a choice
Sounds like Uber and Lyft should stop hiring drivers who sexually harass customers.
When I said “bone fide” I meant that attraction isn’t a choice. In the case of an Uber driver gender preference is a choice.
Based on your “customer preference” logic could I also say my preference is race based because I found a similar statistic? Would that justify Uber allowing race selection?
We have laws that protect people from discrimination on protected grounds (race, gender, sexual orientation, age etc…) not because there are no legitimate statistical reasons for people to have a preference, but because the damage to society caused by discrimination based on characteristics you can’t change about yourself far exceeds these benefits.
Ok, lets say I prefer only male customer service representatives, front desk receptionists, only male grocery store check out clerks, only male baristas, hairstylists, tattoo artists, auto mechanics, chefs/cooks, restaurant servers, daycare providers, dog walkers, whatever.
Now, I only use businesses where my ‘consumer preference’ is ‘respected’, and there are so many others who have similarly strong preferences to me, that businesses begin to either gender bias their hiring, or offer specific locations that are gender locked, or offer me some kind of filter for non location based / scheduled / on demand enterprises.
Am I being sexist, or am I expressing my consumer preferences?
Are the businesses being sexist, or are they aligning business practices with consumer expectations?
What if femboys, queer men, trans men, well, they’re not men to me, I don’t want to see any of them, so I stop using businesses who hire them, or at least allow me some option to avoid them?
What if I also only want to interact with white, christian men?
Who are 25 to 45 years old?
… How do you draw the lines between ‘businesses reflecting consumer demand’ and ‘the inherent structure of society is bigoted and segregated’?
Why do you draw those lines, which lines do you draw or not draw?
None of those scenarios puts the customer at greater risk of being a victim of a violent or sexual crime, none of them put the employee in question alone with the customer in an unmonitored vehicle, easy line to draw
… A tattoo artist or masseuse could not more easily sexually assault me than a grocery store clerk or dog walker?
What about a therapist vs an accountant, doing in office consults with either?
How about a bus driver or a pilot crew, flight attendants?
I am assuming the line you are trying to draw is something like … being in a confined space, and having less control over your ability to egress.
But you didn’t actually draw that line, so that’s just a guess on my part.
You just made a dubious claim and then used that to justify an undefined rule.
If you’d like to actually try to draw a line, that would be nice.
It is already no problem for you to choose a male tattoo artist, a male hairstylist and a male dogwalker. Whereever you choose a single employee to work closely with you and where you are in a somewhat vulnerable position you can already choose. If for some reason you feel more at ease with male doctors, tattoo artists or hairstylists or massagist, noone is stopping you from only booking with a man.
Whereever you can be in a vulnerable position with an employee it makes sense that you can choose who that person is.
Ok so you also seem to be describing ‘being in a vulnerable position’ as a, or the ‘line’.
Can you define that explicitly, you know, as if it were part of a law?
I will note that tons of people have anxiety/trauma complexes that trigger in public, or in private, with people.of specific sexes, genders, races, expressed religions, etc… so… are all of those things fair game for things that can cause people to feel ‘in a vulnerable position’?
Some people don’t really even have any specific personal trauma, but are just bigotted and some way, and would tell you that… certain people with certain attributes in certain situations make them feel ‘vulnerable’.
Nope, because it’s the male drivers fault the demand is different.
Can you explain that to me, how either collectively, or personally, male drivers are somehow all responsible for their services being valued less, less in demand?
Walk me through it.
I’m a guy, never done uber or lyft before, lets say I’m gonna start tomorrow.
Why and or how is it my fault that I’d be less in-demand as a driver than a woman driver?
Nearly all of the significant number of sexual assaults by Uber drivers have been committed by men. So we, as men, if we become Uber drivers, are statistically significantly more likely to commit sexual assault because we are men.
It’s not personally your fault, but it is the fault of the cohort you’d join, male drivers, who have created the statistical anomaly by doing all those sexual assaults.
So, the actions of a subset are being used to justify discrimination against an entire group, from a business.
It’s not personally my fault, but I am (hypothetically) personally punished.
Uh ok, sounds like a winning discrimination lawsuit to me, if you just admit all that right off the top!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act
The text of the relevant law:
All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever."[3]
Relevant case:
The California Supreme Court also decided that the act outlaws sex-based prices at bars (ladies’ nights): offering women a discount on drinks, but not offering the same discount to males. In Koire v Metro Car Wash (1985) 40 Cal 3d 24, 219 Cal Rptr 133, the court held that such discounts constituted sex stereotyping prohibited by this Act.[8]
Uber and Lyft drivers are independent contractors, ie, they are procuring services from Uber and Lyft, the businesses.
They are not employees.
https://chauvellaw.com/post/ca-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-uber-and-lyft-in-ab5-case/
In July 2024, in the case of Castellanos v. State of California, the California Supreme Court issued a ruling which upheld a voter-approved law that allows app-based transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as independent contractors, and not as employees.
Thus, they, men, are a protected class when acting as independent contractors, and being treated in one way or another by the business they are contracting with.
So, that means, that this is far from a frivolous class action.
https://www.vjamesdesimonelaw.com/dealing-with-discrimination-as-an-independent-contractor/
Nonetheless, if you are subjected to blatant discrimination as an independent contractor, you may have protection under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act which mandates that “[a]ll persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, or immigration status are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.” The Unruh Civil Rights Act has been used to obtain protection for independent contractors experiencing discrimination in business relationships, but it does not apply to employment relationships.
If you gave the explanation that you just gave me, to a court, in CA… you would lose, and the men bringing the case would win, because you have just plainly admitted you (figuratively, as Uber/Lyft) are doing discrimination.
The alternative sets a precedent that independent contractors cannot be protected from sex based discrimination.
Which uh, would be very problematic, for say uh, strip clubs and modelling, which tend to also actually largely to entirely also be contractor configurations, not full employee configurations.
Or, Uber and Lyft, in CA at least, have to treat everyone who drives for Uber and Lyft, in CA, as actual employees… which would grant them various benefits, but would also allow for the ‘female driver only’ option to still exist in CA.
Theres… no other, more statistically significant profile to sexually assaulting drivers than just ‘they are men’?
There’s no training regimen or qualifying standards, no background check… ?
There’s… no way other to ensure rider safety?
I think you’re missing the simple fact that it’s the passenger who’s choosing. I get to pick my doctor based on sex, my therapist, my massage therapist.
No, you’re missing the entire concept of Civil Rights and Anti Workplace Discrimination laws.
Just replace sex with race, or height, or disability status, or sexual orientation, and you can see how you are making a fool of yourself.
People have to do these jobs. If you just say a class of people can be prevented from doing these jobs, then you don’t believe in employee/worker rights.
And again, no its not just the passenger who is picking.
Its the business that is allowing their contractors to be discriminated against, when it comes to the awarding of micro-contracts, based on their sex alone.
Businesses, and the government, are not allowed to unfairly discriminate based on things that are irrelevant to the contract itself, in how they award contract work. That’s already illegal, in many other contexts.
Its a worker rights issue, not a consumer choice issue.
Uber or Lyft could actually do effective things to weed out bad drivers… effectively cutting half of their drivers payout down by roughly a third… is not a sensible way to do that.
And yes, a man or a woman being your driver is irrelevant. 99.99% of male drivers do not assault their passengers. The chance that a female driver is going to be safer than a male driver is statistically indistinguishable from 0.
Fuck it, just add a character creator to the Uber app, and it’ll only match you with drivers that look like your custom character.
Me, a person of culture who loves to create beautiful and T H I C C women when a game allows to: I mean… Yes, but…
butt*
YES!
But that would make sense, and that is not what virtue signalling is about.
And who would use it?
Like 1/100th of the number who use the women-only option?
That’s not the point, though.
I understand and support there being an option for woman-only drivers. It’s unfortunte that it’s required, but women has to deal with a lot of harrasment and I don’t see a reason why not provide a safer option for them. (I’m not implying that creep women exist, or that men don’t have to deal with similar problems, but it’s simply way less common).
I don’t agree with this lawsuit, but adding a men-only option would solve the issue from legal standpoint. You are not giving someone advantage over their gender, both have the same options, and it’s up to the customer/market to decide which one they preffer. The people suing Lyft for providing an option that’s unfortunately required because women have to deal with a lot of creeps can get fucked, and this is the best way how to do it.
If you replace sex with race you’ll realise that you’re completely wrong. There is no legal reason to choose your driver’s gender, just like there is no reason to choose your driver’s race. The fact that some drivers harass women is because Uber and Lyft don’t screen drivers sufficiently to protect passengers.
But this is not a race issue. This is a gender and sexual one. Dragging race into this is only a convenient excuse to make it something that it’s not, so that you can argue against it by using a false equivalent analogy.
Do we have statistics on any one ethnicity of drivers harassing some other ethnicity of passengers so often to generate upwards of 2,300 lawsuits? I doubt it. The only motivation behind this is the male sexual drive.
Those stats literally exist.
https://www.theglobalstatistics.com/united-states-crime-statistics-by-race/
I could easily justify asking for a different race driver to prevent the high same race victimisation rate. Unless I was Asian then I would prefer an Asian driver.
Actually Asian crimes are so low everyone who l should just pick Asian drivers to significantly reduce their risk of being victimised.
Also your framing of this gendered violence as caused by “male sexual drive” is dangerous misandry. Male on female violence is a cultural issue caused by people like you accepting that male sexual violence is an inherent and unavoidable part of being male (i.e. rape culture). In reality it’s exactly like speeding, as long as we treat it as unavoidable and natural it’s going to be prevalent everywhere. Yet many countries have almost eliminated speeding and the pedestrian and cyclists deaths it causes through cultural and structural changes. Same goes for countries that have a fraction of north american rape statistics.
We need to stop accepting sexual violence by anyone against anyone. One of those steps is to actually screen and punish drivers who sexually harass customers. That’s what the 2300 lawsuits are about, ride share companies routinely ignore sexual assault reporting and empower sexual victimization of their clients. The other is to stop accepting that “boys will be boys” includes rape and sexual assault. None of those steps is acting like the only way to stop rape is to hide women from men.
Your logic empowers rapists. The “what was she wearing” defense will soon become the “what was her driver sex preference” defense and lawyers will start arguing that women who don’t select “female driver” are being promiscuous and looking to have sex with a male driver. Why else would they not pick “female driver” after all?
Those stats literally exist.
For ride-share drivers? Where? Those are general statistics for the general population. Why are these relevant for a skewed sample of the population? And more importantly, how are those relevant for places like my country, which happens to be a lot more ethnically homogeneous, but that still sees these sexual assaults happening?
Also your framing of this gendered violence as caused by “male sexual drive” is dangerous misandry
Is it, though, if the statistics for sexual crimes based on sex consistently turn up at a 9:1 ratio for males vs females? That’s a whole magnitude of difference that you can’t ignore. And this is the Mexican government putting out these statistics for cases of sexual assault and rape at a national level. The ones I’ve seen for the US are very similar.
male sexual violence is an inherent and unavoidable part of being male
And yet the overwhelming majority of perpetrators are male. Have I been groped by women? Yes. Can I be raped by a woman? Of course. But the fact of the matter is that I’m way more likely to be a victim of sexual assault by other men, and I have been multiple times throughout the years. You can’t deny this is the overall trend in every society that has ever existed.
as long as we treat it as unavoidable and natural
The fact of the matter is that male sexual violence is a part of many species’ biology, including our own. Do you really think that rape is not a viable reproductive strategy in several species? It’s time to face reality, and that’s not necessarily mysandrist despite all this pearl-clutching. If men didn’t do it disproportionately, we wouldn’t be having this exchange. Simple as that.
Your logic empowers rapists.
Only if you frame it under the tired adage of “boys will be boys” as if I’m the one saying that. That’s all you. My POV is based on academic publishing that I’ve read throughout the years.
We need to stop accepting sexual violence by anyone against anyone.
And your solution is?
They used to have similar studies to show that black people had lower IQ.
Sexual assault is a crime. Criminals commit crimes. This isn’t supposed to be a “Men against Women” thing. It’s criminals vs. victims. Of course men will commit more VIOLENT crimes like SA than women, men have a biological strength advantage which really helps commit violent crimes. I don’t deny biology.
But if we act like it’s more than that, that men are inherently going to sexually assault women and there is nothing we can do about it other than hide women, we’re accepting that sexual assault as an unavoidable part of everyday life instead of treating it like the unacceptable crime it is.
Hmm, you are right, replacing gender with race does make a good point I didn’t realize. “I want to be able to choose a white driver because I wouldn’t feel safe with a driver of different race” is basically the same point as with gender, but sounds way more wrong and it shows pretty well why is the whole idea a bad one.
At least I’m struggling to find any arguments for the gender version (which is not a bad thing, mind you), if I take this race example into account. You are right that way more rigorous screening of drivers with 0-strike policy would be a lot better than this.
In general this might work for a lot of similar situations, treating gender as a race. I’ll keep that in mind, because it makes sense and I never really though about it that way. Thanks!
Heritage Foundation: We much create safe zones to protect women.
Also Heritage Foundation: Not like that!
It makes perfect sense if you replace “safe zones” with “cooking, cleaning, child rearing”…
Wait, so like hijabs?
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You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman uber driver
I have multiple times, and it’s always a nice surprise.
arnt some men peferentially choosing female passengers, because they are kinda pervy. it make sense woman wants to feel safe instead of having a potential creep of a male driver by choosing a female-only driver, given the chance a female passenger almost illicit some kind of wierd behaviour from male drivers. and then there stories of them getting assaulted because thier advance of being rebuffed.
No, you don’t get that information beforehand. Just drive details.
Lol, this post was directly below on my feed.
I’d hire him.
Zach Weiner is a GOAT. What a perfect comparison, almost the next theres always a relevant…
Lmaoooo
