When women riders and drivers told us they wanted more control over how they ride and earn, we listened. That feedback led to Women Preferences, features designed to give women the choice to ride with other women. Since our first pilots last summer, we’ve heard just how much that choice matters—from feeling more comfortable in the back seat to more confident behind the wheel.
You can thank conservatives for this needing to occur. And when I say conservatives, I’m not simply talking about white, christian males either. I’m talking about ALL conservatives.
Edit: To be truly blunt, I am referring to the child rapists in America, the goat fuckers from the middle east, the child murderers from Israel, the rapists from India, and so on. The vast majority of everyone I listed is right wing.
I don’t get why they don’t just make this a global option. Anyone can choose their preferred gender. Some women prefer women, some prefer men. Hell, some men prefer men.
I imagine lawyers are the biggest issue. Anti discrimination laws very greatly by jurisdiction. This type of de jure discrimination against a privileged group to counter de facto discrimination against a marginalized one is the type of situation that is going to be thorny pretty much everywhere, with differing results everywhere.
Awesome, but they should also give men the option to choose to ride with a man.
I’m a man, but I also prefer women drivers. Their cars tend to be better taken care of and cleaner. they also do a lot better at respecting and pre-empting preferences in regard to heat/music. Maybe it’s just my area, but I’ve actually never had a “normal” experience with a male Uber driver.
Either their car is all clapped out, it’s dirty and smells bad, they’ll be blasting MAGA rap, or they get real weird with the dropoff. (Like, bro my legs do function and I can walk across the street or down the block a little bit, it’s ok, I gave you a different address from where I’m actually going anyway). Never had any issues like that with women as drivers.
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Honestly, this should be a thing.
There’s already an app that does that.
It’s called grindr.
What if I’ve only been using Uber Black?
Grindr does have ethnicity options, not sure if it’s behind a paywall though.
Male drivers dominate the app. Don’t exactly know what this achieves other than being performative
So what happens when the rider can’t find a ride because 99% of drivers are men and it’s the middle of the night? We never ask the hard questions, do we? Should sex discrimination in employment be legal? I’ve always felt bad for male masseuses, nurses and childcare providers having to deal with additional scrutiny and having money taken out of their pocket not because of merit but because of gender.
Maybe you should not be allowed to choose a lady gyno or any other dr too? Or massage therapist? Or therapist in general. Or hair dresser. Or fucking anything else, huh?
Come on…
Maybe we as a society need to be a little more understanding to those working to survive.
Yeah I like it, men drive faster and better usually. And if you are really late you can ask to speed a little bit. Can we also choose who will cook our food? I find mens cooking much better. Win win overall.
Lyft has been doing it for a while and it seems to work out.
This also boosts demand for women drivers
You can’t make women want to drive. I get why they wouldn’t want to. Lots of creeps.
More women in the gig economy!
Well they’ll just show the no drivers available screen and give the rider option to widen the search criteria?
That’s not how UberBlack/SUV worked for a while but maybe they’re caught up technologically.
I don’t necessarily even disagree with this feature but I can’t help but imagine the outrage if that was almost literally any other group of people.
I want to ride exclusively with bilingual Mongolian ginger Zoroastrian jazz enthusiasts over 5’10" to feel safe and demand a feature for me to do so.
God damn it. I’m 5’9
Great! We just happen to have a driver matching your requirements. Unfortunately, demand for bilingual Mongolian ginger Zoroastrian jazz enthusiasts over 5’10" is off the charts! Fares have increased to get more bilingual Mongolian ginger Zoroastrian jazz enthusiasts over 5’10" Ubers on the road: 9001.0x the normal fare
ugh i guess I can do metalheads too.
You mistype and end up with a methhead.
What other group of… Oh.
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Don’t read the reddit comments, thank me later.
Thanks you for your service
I don’t think anyone worth listening about anything would find this problematic. It ain’t women casually raping and killing, we all know that.
I don’t find this problematic, but umm… I’m just going to leave this here. And while I’m here, why not this… Oh, and this. And umm… this.
Men are statistically way more likely to commit violent and sexual crimes than women (i’m guessing but p sure), sure but um… Would you say “It ain’t white people who are casually killing each other’s gang members”? Gang violence is statistically more likely for people of some races… But would you say that’s a fair statement? And how is it different from your statement?
That’s like 4 people, man, come on. Also, it is DRASTICALLY different, because the differences between the sexes are well documented and easily seen, what are the racial differences that cannot be explained by culture that result in some ethnicities being more dangerous than others? 🤔
Women have to be protected by men FROM other men, across cultures and time. Be real.
The real question is who protects men from women??? Right! Nobody!
That’s like 4 people, man, come on.
Yeah, it’s 4 people. What’s your point?
what are the racial differences that cannot be explained by culture that result in some ethnicities being more dangerous than others?
Great question. As a latino I have dark skin and brown hair and am therefore better at hiding in the shadows. It’s easier for someone to trip with me in the dark if I’m passed out drunk on the floor, possibly causing innocent people injury. This is a serious risk to society and we should be considered dangerous, especially in situations that involve alcohol.
Tomen have to be protected by men FROM other men
Yes, that’s what men are for. We protect from the other -worse- men and whatever it is their women are telling them they need to do and they’ll fucking blindly do it cause yes we’re that dumb.
But also, can we agree we all have to be protected from assholes and ill meaning people, both women and men. Are bad people usually men? Idk maybe. Physical violence-wise, probably, tbh. Are all assholes men though? No, and I can give you at least 4 examples that prove this, but also, the ways that women with bad intentions get what they want is blatantly obvious to anyone who has met one. They get men to do their dirty work for them. Fell free to ask me for a paper or study on this.
Can’t we just speak of people who do horrible things instead of blanket scapegoating a <demographic>?
And you might say men created the system and men traumatize other men which causes more men to be violent and compete with other men to hurt more women and men… But the weird thing about causality and attribution is that it isn’t a linear path and the story ends wherever you arbitrarily choose it does.
Who were these men raised by? Who are more often than not the partners of these horrible men that allow them to commit their atrocities? If us men are all savages that will never have any sense of morality and are doomed to commit one atrocity after another, surely it’s the responsibility of the humans that aren’t monsters to reduce the harm we inevitably cause by existing. And what do women do in the face of this situation? Keep having sex with and producing more men. Thanks a lot, women… Thanks for not only having sex with the parents of the dudes that bullied me in high school, but also literally bringing them to this world and raising them with evil woman influence that brainwashed them into traumatizing me.
Ok so maybe I went just a little bit overboard but surely you understand my point. Can we not just talk about individuals that do horrible things? Cause if the problem is “men exist”, the solution is easy. Women should just stop having sex with us. No more men. Problem solved in 1 generation. If you wanna be faster you could do like the 4 ladies I linked though.
Wow, you got here? I’m surprised… and flattered tbh. thanks for reading and feel free to somehow imply me having a penis reduces my value as a human being.
For real, though. I’m sorry for all the horrible men. And sure, I
might beam an idiot and have opinions you find repulsive, but I know I’m not the only one genuinely doing the best I can to make the world nicer.From one non-white man to another: you seem like a good hearted person, but I didn’t say all of that and you’re fighting windmills. I wish I could give you a longer reply but I’ve clocked in and I have to work, sadly. Take care, friend. 👋
You too and godspeed.
I used questions to illustrate my point. My point was an invitation to reevaluate repeating a discourse that’s harmful to society. Not just men.
If you’d like me to be more explicit about the statement I’m suggesting or what I actually believe, I’m more than glad to rephrase and elaborate.
I believe doing blanket attributions of <horrendous acts> to any <members of a demographic> is tribalistic hate speech regardless of how statistically likely the demographic is to commit them.
Humans are more than the demographics they belong to and we all have the ability to choose our own paths no matter where we come from or how we were born. Reducing an entire population to <the ones that commit the atrocities> is not part of the problem, it is the problem.
No different than racism, elitism, classism or sexual discrimination. It’s just plain dehumanization, which doesn’t only lower the bar on the collective moral expectations over the group’s members effectively making the horrendous acts more likely, it breeds generalized distrust and erodes empathy in society as a whole.
When you reduce groups of people, each a human being with their own circumstances and fears and struggles and trauma and feelings to “those ppl that do that horrible thing” you strip the individuals of the group you might actually meet and interact with from the benefit of doubt, the possibility of being different from what you attribute and perpetuate the very dynamic you resent them for.
I feel like the questions were a more elegant (and succinct) approach, but to each their own.
Dude, it’s not that deep. Uber has a rapey problem and they figured out that this is the cheapest way to handle it.
I wasn’t even talking about uber and i think their initiative is good.
As a man, this makes me sad. As a man, I also understand.
Thank you
The internet is never not a shitshow when it comes to women.
Except when it comes to a country like India or Japan. Then it’s all like nodding and agreement that those men are creeps who need to be restrained.
unless you’ve actually literally lived as a woman you cannot know the monumental amount of sexual harassment we face and fear on a day-to-day basis. doubly so for trans women. every single moment i am alone in public i am deathly anxious that i could be harassed (sexually or otherwise) or hate-crimed or whatever. and the worst part is, there’s nothing i could do about it. the perpetrator would get away scot-free. the cops do not fucking care
however bad you think it is, it’s worse. whatever you’re imagining, it is exponentially more horrendous
As a man, I genuinely wonder how much actual harassment women face vs how much they hear about it, driving the anxiety.
I get to feel that a lot of these fears are real, but many are manufactured. But I can be wrong.
Anecdotally, last week I (middle aged lady) was approached by two strange men. One tried to grab me outside my work site, and one told me how lovely I was and asked for my number (in target). It’s much, much worse for young women. It’s not manufactured, unlike the doubt of women’s lived experience seems to be.
I have twice been in public with my fiance and some random twat in a pickup truck yells cat calls while driving by slowly in a parking lot. Wish the fuckers would stop so I can pull them through the window. God knows what she’s delt with when I’m NOT standing next to her holding her hand. Sick as a society we are, that’s why we have trump as pedophile in cheif. Smh.
It depends where you live really. It’s a problem in the US indeed but for instance in many countries in Europe they don’t sexually harass their females on a “day-to-day basis”
This is the thing as a former white man.
Authority to touch others flows down the privilege hierarchy.
Trans women are always judged as the aggressor, always. Our bodies are considered public property.
If men can never know. How can men ever trust women’s calls to action on the issues are fair, just or worthwhile?
You answered your own question. The task for men is to trust women when they describe their experiences, even if it’s completely invisible and alien to their own experiences. Reading detailed firsthand accounts is a good way to build understanding.
That is not a task for men. That is a demand from women. If men can only decide to believe based on the trust they have with the speaker then the speaker must earn their trust. It is not men’s responsibility to become trusting of women, just because women want it. If women want men to trust their words then it’s women’s responsibility to gain men’s trust. It would be profoundly unwise of men to believe without either trust or safety. How often do you ever concern yourself with the safety of men? Because from my experiences, those of my male friends and of the media women like most, women ensuring men feel safe enough to trust is not a concept that rarely ever appears, nevermind it being respected when it does.
I think we all need to do the work to understand the problems faced by different groups. Women need to be doing this too. This isn’t a thread about problems men face, however.
Few of them ever are…which is an example of the point. Stories of men’s experiences are not wanted. So when the topics affecting men are brought up, it’s the closest many get to being heard. Which, of course, they get attacked for. It’s not the place but there is no place so it never gets heard. Seems to me like a little system of censorship and oppression.
This is kind of an insane take.
Women have always been vulnerable. Women are easy targets because they are, on average, physically weaker than males.
Women get raped and sexually assaulted at rates far beyond men. 50% of women will suffer a sexual assault of some kind in their life. Just 3% of men report a sexual assault.
Your retort is that because you lack empathy women are somehow suspect?
It is because I have empathy for both women and men. It also means those who don’t understand ,or get offended, may lack the empathy for both needed to understand the point made. Do you empathize with men’s experience of women?
The same way we trust that it’s really painful for men to get kicked in the junk without having to experience it ourselves.
And how do we accomplish that?
If I knew how to make everyone empathetic we wouldn’t even need to be discussing this in the first place. What a vapid question.
Sounds like it an incredibly important question if you want more empathy in the world.
The question of how we make empathy universal isn’t the vapid question. Yours that I was responding to was.
Either way, if women can manage the hit in the balls empathy, surely you can figure this out, too, without a step-by-step pictorial diagram and someone to hold your hand.
You can’t explain how empathy works and think understanding it is vapid so your beleifs about what is and isn’t possible, how and when, seem highly suspect. How do you know men and women are equally capable of how empathy, or if what is required to encourage it, is present?
The introduced it first in saudi arabia in 2019, after women were given the right to drive, turns out they found it good so they used this setting in the US (2025) and elsewhere (2025 - 2026). The feature is a priority queue for women
When requesting a trip, women will receive a new option called ‘Women Drivers.’ If the wait time is longer than they want, though, they’ll still have the option to receive other rides with faster pickup times.
In other words, if you’re a guy and the area is poorly covered, you get your uber driver all the same.
Probably gonna get flak for this, but as a man, I have no issues if women want to stick with other women and I don’t particularly care if I have the option to pick whatever driver I want.
Obviously weirdness and sexual misconduct can occur to both men and women from both men and women, but it’s disingenuous as hell to pretend that men being weird or sexual towards women isn’t the most common by a colossal margin.
No flak. I was gonna post the same thing. Women deserve to feel safe too.
The relationship between men and women (and generally all human interactions) in America has gotten so fucking weird. I agree that people should be able to take personal steps to keep themselves safe. My point is we are so rightfully fearful of each other here because we’ve completely abandoned the sense of unity in America. Our social safety net, sense of humanity, belief in the good in the world, justice system, and education is so poor it’s literally statistically unsafe to be alone with a stranger. It’s what happens to your society when hyper individualism takes hold and you end up with a nation of people thinking they are the main character.
I don’t think this issue is reflective of American gender wars in particular. I can think of dozens of countries I’d be way more terrified of being in a car alone with an unknown man as a woman. I’ve never had a bad encounter with any uber drivers in the US, but I have heard directly from drivers that drunk riders can be a fucking menace, so I don’t mind if female drivers would rather take their chances with drunk women vs drunk men.
Probably gonna get flak for this
Oh please.
You know perfectly well it’s not a controversial opinion.Lemmy is filled with men right activists and misogynists that don’t hide.
I only added it because I wasn’t sure if there was a population of man-children who feel slighted every time women get anything even remotely positive on Lemmy like there was on Reddit
There is. It’s substantial, but much more subtle than on Reddit. Slurs and outright sexism usually get you banned pretty quick here, so it’s largely just the casual sexism left, but it runs pretty deep. And it’s been here at least as long as I have overall (my oldest account is about 3 yo). In the original wave, the shitty population drove off the vast majority of cis female users within 6 months, which is a huge part of why the demographics around here are so heavily skewed toward men. This is also why the women’s communities, which all died out and were resurrected during the second Lemmy population boom, are so heavily policed to shut men down.
You can tell we have such a population because all posts like these about women getting anything at all, good or bad, always, without fail, have an absolute glut of comments. If you then take the time to read all of them, a solid percentage are very clearly motivated by sexism. Now, commenters are obviously self-selecting, so it’s impossible to say in absolute terms, but of the people who choose to comment on such things, and generously leaving out any comments that may just be poorly worded, I’ve typically seen between 10 and 30% of the comments have such motivations, depending how old the post is and how much visibility it got. It’s not always the same people, either, it’s different shitty people most of the time. Downvotes also flow like wine if you challenge those comments, or call out the trend.
It is worse.
Don’t say that. I came here to get away from those twats and speak with at least somewhat rational people.
It sucks and will only get worse as time progresses. Lemmy is very anti-woman, pro gun, and pro violence.
It does have less capitalistic bootlicking bastards, but only slightly less.
If you’re worried about capitalism, things don’t look great here either: the top post in my feed right now is a corporate PR release.
(It’s this post.)
Yeah, corporations don’t even have to do the dirty work as people will happily parrot the bullshit they say for free. A great example on Lemmy of this is Proton. For some reason it really brings the bootlickers out to defend it.
If it wasn’t controversial MRA wouldn’t exist lol
As a burley man with lots of facial hair, when I’m out for a run, if I’m passing a woman in an isolated area or if I’m passing someone, I do everything I can to look not threatening and alert people of my presence to not startle them. It’s unfortunate that it’s something I feel I need to do, but I’m not out there trying to scare anyone, but when I do on accident it feels like getting kicked in the nuts.
I’m very for women being able to make choices to protect themselves, especially when it’s something like this Uber stuff where it doesn’t hurt someone else. One could argue it could hurt a males revenue, but that would be a weak argument.
Yup, I’m also squarely in the “good for them, it doesn’t really affect me in the slightest and they deserve to feel safe” boat. But I also have a sneaking suspicion that the guys like us aren’t the ones who would be upset about this. The Venn diagram of “men who wouldn’t get angry about this” and “fucking creeps” is probably close to being two separate circles.
Wouldn’t it be a single circle?
Hah, I typoed. Fixed now. I shouldn’t comment before I’ve had my coffee.
As a smaller guy with a slightly feminine appearance (that I try to lean away from but how much can I do), I also fear men I don’t know (bad experiences) and wish that somehow I could choose too. But any sort of ‘qualified selection’ would guarantee someone malicious slips through eventually, and that’s obviously not worth it. I’m not going to let jealousy and whataboutism get in the way of progress. On that note, I do worry slightly about how they’re verifying gender? If it’s by DL, this will affect trans folks in some states much more than others. If it’s not, then verification becomes a very big question mark.
I also can’t help but notice all the language is very passive, on one hand it makes sense they wouldn’t be able to guarantee anything but at the same time I find it so hard to trust passive language from any tech company, they’ve all abused my good faith of it into the ground. But I digress.
No flak just thoughts, concerns notwithstanding this is good to see overall. I’m sure Lyft will have to deploy something equivalent to stay competetive.
Lyft already has this feature, it’s called women+
Fuck uber / lyft / skip / dash anyways.
100%. I feel better knowing that the women in my life have the ability to not ride around with some random dude. I have done Uber to make ends meet a number of times, and I’d happily accept the decrease in ridership if it means women are less scared.
I understand why women feel this is necessary, but I also understands that a policy like this paints all men with the same brush. It’s like they are saying “Since a small number of men are creeps, we give you the option to avoid all men”. Which seems to be counterproductive.
Meanwhile, Uber has invasive tracking, where they know everyone’s history. They know how many drives a customer has provisioned without incident. And I have always considered these rideshare things to be particularly safe, because all parties are consenting to the tracking. That’s not guarantee nothing will happen, of course, but it is more unlikely when all parties know Big Uber is watching you.
If Uber had rolled this out and said “you have the option to avoid rides with the opposite gender without an established history in our files”, then I think I would have less of a problem with it. But it seems like I can do everything right, and be respectful of everyone, and give Uber shitloads of money, and still be potentially waiting longer for a ride, just because of my parts. How is that OK?
It’s not about you. Repeat after me: It’s not about you. It’s about women who feel unsafe.
Most sexual assault is not reported.
And you will not be waiting longer, women who choose this service will be. So cut the pity party. You lose absolutely nothing.
The more I think about it, though, the more I think this is a genuine discrimination case. If Uber had rolled this out and said “White drivers can choose to pick up only white passengers”, would that be OK? Or even “Male drivers can choose to only pick up male passengers”?
Heck, I even think if they rolled this out and said “female users can choose a preference for only female drivers”, that might be able to fly, because it’s the buyer of the service expressing that view.
But to me, for the people offering the service, there is no difference between this and someone who doesn’t want to make a cake for a gay wedding. When you are offering a service to the general public, you can’t really discriminate like that. Yes, I understand the safety thing. But a store that catered to women wouldn’t be able to bar men from entering at all. Why is a car service any different? Yes, drivers are using their own cars, but it is still a car service.
You know what sucks the most about this? They’re probably gonna get sued over it, either by the Trump DOJ or some shitty Red State AG, who is probably gonna win.
Since a small number of men are creeps, we give you the option to avoid all men". Which seems to be counterproductive.
Speaking as a man, the majority of men are creeps, but even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t be counterproductive. If it was, say, a 5% chance, one in twenty, that would be far and away high enough of a risk to make a move like this worthwhile. Hell even 1%. And we know the proportion is far greater than that.
They know how many drives a customer has provisioned without incident.
No they don’t, single digit percentages of sexual harassment are ever even reported let alone followed up because almost nobody gives a shit about it. Someone’s squeaky clean history is basically indistinguishable from that of a serial creep.
How is that OK?
Sadly, lots of things in the world aren’t ok. It’s tough out there.
Large numbers of men are creeps, and I say that as a man. That’s the issue, that’s why they’re doing this.
Is there a technical definition of “large” that justifies this? If not, then this is all based on feelings.
I think it’s bad news to generalize entire large groups like this, no matter how good the intentions are.
There have been a few studies. Most estimates put it at around 20% of men engage in actively degrading behaviour, sexual harassment, or have had a history of sexual assault, with between 5-8% actually engaging in violence. It isn’t everyone, but it is around 1 in 5 which is not a small group that could be classified as “Creeps.” It’s a lot higher percentage of the population than, for example, the percentage of violent extremists among Muslims.
Anecdotally, large by the fact that every single woman I know has experienced some form of sexual harassment. And that’s not hyperbolic.
More abstract, large by the fact that it is even a discussion. If a not inconsequential amount of men have harassed women enough that this is just brought up at all, then it’s an issue that needs to be addressed in some form or fashion.
Right, but is this the best way to address this, by telling women “All men are the same, they will harass you, they can’t help themselves. So here, click this button and you will never have to pick one up?”
Best? Maybe not.
But until the underlying social issue gets resolved, it’s a solution to address it.
It’s also one that could be utilized alongside other protections for women, or as a stop gap to get to a better solution.
They still will need to work out other ways to empower women to terminate a ride (both as driver and passenger) without penalty AND to ensure the passenger is let out of the vehicle in a safe place. Along with better reporting, investigations, and consequences for those who do harass.
Well yeah it’s based on feelings and it definitely just mindlessly repeating the extremely popular male bashing perspective the majority of fediverse users blindly accept as dogma, but it’s also undeniably true. A very large number of us are creeps. If you’d like to get technical, we can pull sexual crimes stats of men vs women and see which number is larger… But, do we really have to?
And it’s not that we’re inherently evil or perverse by nature. It’s that, more often than not, in one on one interactions we are the ones with the potential ability to physically dominate and coerce the human of the other sex. Every once in a while a man will delude himself, snap, explode or give in to whatever dark urge was brooding in him and use that ability in some horrible way.
The probability of an individual of whatever demographic doing something horrible is = (the probability they have the urge to attempt the horrible thing) x (the probability they have the capacity to carry out the horrible thing). It’s really not that complicated.
And If you think women would never do this if they had, on average, larger body frames, more strength and were brainwashed into seeking validation through dominance from an early age, please allow me to introduce you to the fascinating matriarchal pack dynamics of the spotted hyena, where females are larger and stronger than males. Guess which sex is more aggressive and socially dominant?
It’s not that us men are evil. It’s that on average, we have physical power that more often than not, woman do not. Any form of power has the potential to corrupt, cause it can be used for evil and therefore, every once in a while, given a large enough time frame or population, it will.
the extremely popular male bashing perspective the majority of fediverse users blindly accept as dogma, but it’s also undeniably true.
It’s just true, we believe this stuff because it’s true.
What is true, specifically?
A very large number of us are creeps.
You said “small numbers” first as the entire basis of your argument and now you pull the “feelings” card on me??!
Well, yeah, this is the same type of shit that is used to denigrate Muslims, or trans people, or any other marginalized group. “Some of them are violent, so we won’t trust all of them!”. I don’t think we really want to go there, much less with half the human race.
You dont think that or you dont feel that?
The issue is they feel safer, yet woman are used to traffick other woman because they feel safer around them.
I think women drivers only wanting to pick up women is fine if thats what they want to do. That won’t negatively effect everyone else who is working. It only negatively effects your own potential at making your money.
But riders being able to select women drivers really takes a hard monetary hit against male drivers for the sake of being sexist.
it’s disingenuous as hell to pretend that men being weird or sexual towards women isn’t the most common by a colossal margin.
I’m not convinced. Every guy I know has a story about women being creeps to them, but ask them if they reported it, every single one of them will say no.
And for the very few that do try to report it? They’re usually laughed out of the room. My own mother said “oh but it’s cute when older women do it to younger guys”. That’s not a rare opinion, that’s the default in our culture.
So we don’t show up in any official statistics, because our culture discourages us from reporting, and is less likely to take us seriously if we do.
So no, I’m not convinced that men being weird to women is the most common by any margin. We haven’t even asked men.
Hello. You now know me. I have none of those stories. Women have been nothing but respectful to me.
But if you’re comfortable sharing, I would love to hear your story about how you were harassed by a female Uber driver.
I’m a guy. I was harassed by a female uber driver once (I wrote about it here) and I also…
[sexual coersion trigger warning]
I was raped by a women while intoxicated a few years ago. It didn’t traumatize me heavily, but I definitely was raped. Would you like to hear about it?
I usually have positive interactions with women and appreciate the ones in my life, but just cause these things are rare doesn’t mean they don’t happen.
That’s horrible. I don’t know how to do a spoiler tag, but let’s just say ; same.
So to stay on topic. Would you use a feature that let you not have women drivers?
I’m sorry you went through that.
Not really, no. I don’t mind.
That’s super awkward. Sorry you had to deal with that.
To stay on topic, would you use an option to not ride with women drivers now?
I don’t take uber or taxis. But I’ve had random women come up to me in public places and grab my private parts, or say sexually suggestive things, and it makes me feel kinda paralyzed, like a deer in headlights, cause what am I gonna do, be the guy that yells at a woman for sexual assault? And then I just never go back in that store for a few months.
Maybe Uber should be responsible for background checks of their drivers and hold them accountable for their actions and be able to fire them for misconduct. But that might require hiring drivers as actual employees. And then Uber could issue company vehicles.
Oh wait, I’m describing taxi companies that already existed before Uber.
The fact that we allow Uber/Lyft to operate as a way to skirt regulations that were put in place to keep people safe, and then trust Uber will implement work around solutions like this is ridiculous.
Same goes to AirBnB
I dont think that this is really the problem uber is solving here.
I dont think women passengers or drivers are being physically assaulted during an uber ride, they just feel uncomfortable with men. Maybe its flirting, maybe its a fertive glance, maybe its nothing. It doesn’t really matter whether male drivers have ever done anything to deserve being avoided, the point is that women want to avoid them.
Im a guy. I feel a bit awkward about this, as if someone had said to me “I dont want to interact with you because you might rape me”. Its not a nice feeling but its a misconception of what’s really happening.
Ultimately in any specific instance where a woman chooses not to interact with a man, I absolutely believe its her right to do so. However, I do hope that society doesn’t reach a point where women in general make that choice as a matter of routine.
While I agree with this, and I’m not defending skirting regulations, before rideshare apps, taking taxis was an awful experience. At least half the time, if you try to pay with a credit card, the machine was “broken”, if you wanted to get a ride at a specific time you had to call ahead and hope that a taxi would show up.
Rideshsre apps forced regular taxis to up their game and provide better service, some did and now have their own apps.
I don’t even know what regulations they are skirting. You can’t just sign up to become a driver without submitting information just like any other job. Background checks are required, licenses and what not. People are also supposed to leave feedback if they had a bad experience so I could only imagine that the complaints are surrounding the idea that Uber isn’t following up on the feedback enough. That said if 500 people ride with that driver and rate them well, and 1 person says they were a perv, and Uber looks at it and finds that person has called several male drivers pervs while they get good ratings from everyone else, there could be a problem that those people have a type, or Uber could be thinking the issue is the rider at that point
Uhh I traveled to san Fransisco and there was an Uber booth in mall I was getting some necessities for. The booth dude was like hey come earn some money. I’m not from here , no worries that doesn’t matter, ok well I don’t have a car. That’s fine we can get you sorted on that, it’s a great way to make I little extra money.
No dude I’m not interested.
If you change your mind come back
Someone trying to sell you a job, that’s interesting. I wonder if they do that at certain times of the year places. I imagine you need a lot more Uber drivers in specific areas for events. Like if Comicon is happening, you suddenly have hundreds of thousands of people coming to the area that will spike the number of people needing rides. I assume the same happens with the Superbowl, Mardi Gras, soon to be the World Cup, etc.
That also only solves half of the problem. Female drivers also want to be safe and doing background checks on everyone who has an Uber account isn’t very practical.
