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.
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.
As a man, this makes me sad. As a man, I also understand.
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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
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.
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?
Your retort is that because you lack empathy women are somehow suspect?
The same way we trust that it’s really painful for men to get kicked in the junk without having to experience it ourselves.
It really irks me when people change the titles of the articles they link to to try to fit their narrative. Because sadly people dont really click through to the article. Just share the real title and give your commentary on the comments.
Women Preferences Expands Nationwide
The original title only makes sense to people seeing it listed on Uber’s website who are familiar with Uber’s “Women Preferences”. That exact title without modification doesn’t provide enough context for a random post on Lemmy, IMO.
I do agree that it’s annoying when posts change the title in a way that didn’t accurately reflect the linked article, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case here.
The link isn’t to inform people, it’s to make the title more beleivable.
Makes me wonder if the next option will be language.
Honestly, I don’t care about gender. Can you keep them off the phone and silent (goes both ways, I will do the same)?
i have only ever been sexually harassed by male uber drivers. this is a nice feature
I was once harassed pretty horribly by a lady driver.
Long story...
As soon as I got in the car, she handed me her cell phone and told me to put my favorite song on (wtf), not taking no for an answer and not accepting her phone back. While I eventually realized I couldn’t hand her back her phone without a song on, I started looking through Spotify. She started asking very personal and increasingly more intimate questions. The tone was very authoritative too. It felt like she was demanding me to answer.
At first I just gave non answers to, hinting discomfort and lack of interest, but then had to clearly and plainly tell her her questions were making me uncomfortable. She laughed it off, asked why I felt that way and then kept asking things that were completely inappropriate, very bluntly. It was an extremely intense conversation and I felt like I was being interrogated as some kind of weird power trip thing.
Eventually I stopped answering (sometimes I forget conversations are optional), kept quiet for a few questions and I asked some small talk things just to take the focus off my intimate life. I asked how her day had been, how long she Ubered for and what was going on in her life.
Pot twist: Turns out she had just been dumped from the only relationship she had in her life, which had lasted about 8 years. She was basically having a mental breakdown and trying to talk her way out of it in the worst possible way. She may have also been neurodivergent.
I told her about a breakup I had that was horrible and how I eventually bounced back. We then talked about life and what mattered to us. Ended up shaking hands and wishing each other well when she dropped me off.
Does this prove anything? No.
Is it good that people can choose the gender of their driver? Sure, I guess.
What was the point of my story? Erm… Is there a point? i guess maybe sometimes creepiness is just a sensitive person going through some shit? I just wanted to share tbh.
She did harass the shit out of me, despite me never feeling in physical danger next to her (which of course would have made the dynamic completely different), but idk she was also a nice person.
Honestly, there’s no point to my story and I’m not trying to prove anything. I’ve just never talked about this, your comment just brought the memory back and I felt like writing it out.
If you got here, thanks for reading and I’m truly sorry for all the ways you suffer and face terrifying situations I am unable to understand.
I should get some sleep. Have a good one.
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.
The issue is they feel safer, yet woman are used to traffick other woman because they feel safer around them.
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 it wasn’t controversial MRA wouldn’t exist lol
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fuck uber / lyft / skip / dash anyways.
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.
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.
You would have to be able to avoid lesbians too for this to be able to really work
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
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.
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.
Said it yesterday about this on a post on my instance.
I drive for Uber occasionally, I am a guy, and got offered this option to only accept women riders. That doesn’t seem right…
Maybe Uber is trying to start a new dating app. “The best way to pick up chicks is to trap them in your car.”
This is hitting hard cause I went from a '05 Hyundai sonata to a new Toyota Avalon, and the auto lock feature when shifting it of park still fucks with me and riders.
I read about a horror story on Reddit of an Uber driver who engaged the child locks so they had a reason to open the door for the rider and I desperately want to avoid that perception!
FYI, most newer cars have a way for you to turn off the auto lock feature. It is usually a setting in menus, but some might have you do things like close all the doors, turn the car on, and then hold the unlock button for 10 seconds.
Worst case scenario is it has to be done through the programming tool, so if you can’t figure out how to do it yourself, then the next time you have it serviced tell them to turn off the auto-locks.If I remember correctly, when auto locks were first introduced some countries saw them as dangerous so automakers were required to provide a way to turn it off.
Just tucked with the settings and you’re absolutely right!
Thanks homie!
Women’s fear of men seems like it will naturally encourage gender segregation in society. If women have control of the formation of that segregation it will move toward privileges and advantages exclusive to women. Since society has finite resources, any community resources that are used exclusively for the beneficial segregation of women, can easily produce inequalities. This is a problem without a fair or equitable solution.
Men could quit being disgusting predators…
can we have an option to not get a ride with you specifically? regardless of your gender
Since we’re doing unsubstantiated conclusions, we’ll be better off with women in charge. Because, women being human, they are capable of vile self-serving and that works out well for everyone.
Lyft had been doing that for a while.
Also,
Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
can males avoid women drivers or is that considered sexist? what if a male wants to mitigate the chance of being falsely accused of assault/rape? I hope people have the choice regardless of gender
It might be considered sexist, depending on who you ask.
The amount of males being falsely accused of sexual assault is much lower than the amount of females being exposed to sexual assault. Hence why there has been provided a measure for women at this scale, and not for men.
But the fear of sexual assault is why women prefer women, so ain’t the fear of accusations a justifiable reason? Why does it have to be equal to matter?
As a penis haver who has been falsely accused of sexual assault, it’s far more common than you think.
The amount of males being falsely accused of sexual assault is much lower than the amount of females being exposed to sexual assault.
And you know this because… vibes?
As a domestic abuser survivor (of a woman), a lot of us men are just not taken seriously. It is a lot like how people diminish one person’s pain/suffering just because it “isn’t as bad” as someone else’s pain. Men are absolutely abused, raped, and falsely accused. But because it happens to women more, we have to bear our suffering in silence.
No one is saying that men cannot be victims of harassment or assault.
However it is objectively true that women deal with this problem in much higher quantities than men do.
However it is objectively true that women deal with this problem in much higher quantities than men do.
How do you know that it is objectively true, if you also know these statistics are based around a culture that discourages men from reporting this problem?
And that’s why there should be a “no foreigners or blacks”-option.
Per RAINN, 57% of perpetrators are white. I’ll charitably imagine you’re attempting to point out perceived hypocrisy in gender vs race selection, but you’re perpetuating racist and xenophobic stereotypes. White men commit rape at more than twice the rate of black men, and naturally born citizens commit crimes at rates higher than both documented and undocumented immigrants.
If you want to make the case that it’s a discriminatory policy, you’re welcome to do so, but tying it to false perceptions of race is probably not the best move. It’s coming off as reactionary at best.
The actual argument is that it’s acceptable to discriminate against people of color because data shows they are considerably more violent than whites.
The same thing applies to discriminating against men because data shows they are considerably more violent than women.
Sexism and racism are okay if you have the data to back it up. Unless… this is a double standard and we’re allowing discrimination based on sex but not discrimination based on race?
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You ever tried taking a little girl to the park when you identified as a man?
It gets really weird when complete strangers go up to her and ask her if she knows you.
They don’t do that when you present as a woman.
This has never happened to me, and I take my daughter, and her friends to the park all the time…
I never understood this fear.
Always seems weird when people are more worried about accusations than sexual assault/harassement. The latter seems far more common ime, even if you are seen as a guy.
I think it’s a perspective thing.
Men are less likely to perceive themselves as potential SA victims (regardless of actual numbers): so the relative subjective “chance” of false accusations against them vs being victims themselves impacts their priorities.
I have never been afraid of being falsely accused of assault or rape because I have never done anything even close to anything that can be defined as assault or rape, or shown any behavior or tendencies to do so.
I think you’re missing the basic definition of what a false accusation is, here. The whole point of it is that you didn’t do the thing that you’re being accused of.
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The amount of falsely accused is less than 5% of all the rape cases.
So a women getting actually raped is about 20 times more likely than a man being falsely accused of rape.
And that is only counting all the instances where the rape got reported.
The amount of falsely accused is less than 5% of all the rape cases.
LOL how could you possibly know that?
So a women getting actually raped is about 20 times more likely than a man being falsely accused of rape.
Not sure what you’re getting at here. Do you think this is some sort of competition for who is the biggest victim? And only the victor should be granted “equality”?
LOL of course not. Equality for me, not for thee.
This is the shit that makes men look bad.
Men absolutely do not experience sexual harassment at the same level that women do.
It’s not close at all.
Why can’t we just let the women have a dub without being all “buhhh what about da men???”
And women don’t experience accusations of sexual harrassment at the same level that men do.
Men also experience plain physical assault at ~5x the rate of women.
Why can’t we just support equality for everyone? Why is that so hard?
As much as you want to try to paint men as the victims, they’re just not.
Yes, it happens. No it does not happen nearly as frequently.
This issue is extremely skewed toward women.
People of all types are victims of various stereotypes.
What does this even mean lmao
I just don’t see this need to want to be a victim.
It’s not that complicated roflcopter. I don’t know how to break it down any further.
Why would you think anyone wants to be a victim?
Are you an “All Lives Matter” clown? It sure reads that way.
Why can’t we just support equality for everyone? Why is that so hard?
At least part of it is because of people like you who get upset whenever someone challenges the grossly inequitous status quo.
You’re the one advocating for inequality.
are you trying to say being accused of sexual assault is the same as being sexually assaulted lmao
No. I did not, and am not roflcopter
That’s it, I’ve had it. Somebody get Joe Rogan in here so we can hash this out.
