Lyft is introducing a new feature that lets women and non-binary riders choose a preference to match with drivers of the same gender.
The ride-hailing company said it was a “highly requested feature” in a blog post Tuesday, saying the new feature allows women and non-binary people to “feel that much more confident” in using Lyft and also hopefully encourage more women to sign up to be drivers to access its “flexible earning opportunities.”
The service, called “Women+ Connect,” is rolling out in the coming months. Riders can turn on the option in the Lyft app, however the company warns that it’s not a guarantee that they’ll be matched with a women or non-binary person if one of those people aren’t nearby. Both the riders and drivers will need to opt-in to the feature for it work and riders must chose a gender for it to work.
What would stop me, a man, from claiming this status and requesting female drivers? While this policy was undoubtably made with good intentions, it is ripe for abuse.
Technically nothing. There is no gatekeeping in being non-binary along the lines of presentation. But you claiming this as a passenger does not effect the other passengers who are made to feel safer by the adoption of this option. A fair number of female drivers in the service are also still likely to drive for male clients regularly anyway.
However if all drivers have protections for drivers to shut down abuses by scummy clients who use the opportunity of a temporarily captive audience to be disgusting towards drivers then this overall becomes less of a concern.
Almost all forms of accommodation leave certain paths open for abuse by bad actors. Erring on the side of the person who needs additional help participating in society is usually the more ethical choice because while a bad actor can be a pain there’s usually already laws on the books or policies that can be enacted that allow you to deal with one. For the person seeking accommodation the cost of not having access can mean the world becomes a smaller and/or more dangerous place because of reasons that have nothing to do with them. In some ways that can emotionally be looked at as “letting the assholes win”.
Well you see, most people aren’t assholes.
deleted by creator
Most people ARE assholes
Not at all, you just notice the assholes much easier than non-assholes.
It sounds like you need better friends.
Or there’s that old saying, if everywhere you go smells like shit, check your shoes.
In that scenario, I would guess when the driver sees you they wouldn’t let you in the car.
Wouldn’t that make you extra liable for getting sued, because on top of whatever the driver claims you did, you also specifically chose the option you shouldn’t have chosen?
Like it’s basically adding an extra layer of “This guy was clearly a bad actor”
ITT: Men who don’t understand the dangers of living as a woman.
I’m a passing trans woman. I presented as a man for decades of my life and have lived the last handful as a woman. But the amount of times I’ve been groped, harassed, chased or made to feel worried about my physical safety just for existing in the world has skyrocketed. Truly, I know what it’s like to experience society both ways and without question it is worse for women.
I’ve had men sit next to me at the theater, put their hand on my knee and try to feel me up. Ive had men smirk as they “accidently” bump in to me at the grocery to squeeze my breasts. I’ve been followed to my car by men asking what I was doing tonight, who then started yelling and only left because I had pepper spray.
Like, srsly. Every single one of you saying this is discrimination have no clue what it’s like to worry that any interaction with a man you don’t know can quickly turn scary. Getting in to some random guys lyft who will then know where I live, while he has the ability to lock the doors is honestly a super vulnerable position to put yourself in situation.
Yes, mens wages will be harmed, but women are physically being harmed right now. Tell lyft to pay their drivers an hourly wage like they should anyways and STFU about a safety feature.
Couldn’t broke drivers just self-identify as non-binary for more money?
deleted by creator
they would get deactivated so fast though
I think a lot of straight cisgender men think that they understand the anxiety women and visibly LGBT+ people face in these sorts of situations. And maybe they understand it at some academic level. But they really don’t truly grok it, and how it affects people’s lives.
I just learned a new word. Neat.
Where are you from that all of this shit happens?
Truly, I know what it’s like to experience society both ways and without question it is worse for women.
Here are some fun facts about how much better it is to be a man in our society:
Based on available data from 1980 to 2008—
Males represented 77% of homicide victims and nearly 90% of offenders. The victimization rate for males (11.6 per 100,000) was 3 times higher than the rate for females (3.4 per 100,000). The offending rate for males (15.1 per 100,000) was almost 9 times higher than the rate for females (1.7 per 100,000).
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
In the United States, more men than women are shot to death by the police. As of August 28, the U.S. police shot 600 men and 21 women to death in 2023. In 2022, the police shot 1,022 men and 44 women to death.-
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585149/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-gender/
Cool, now do rape, assault, and sexual harassment like the person you’re responding to was talking about. Your response is tone deaf whataboutism.
Males represented 77% of homicide victims and nearly 90% of offenders.
In other words, male on male crime. What’s wrong with men’s culture to be causing this problem? 🤔🙄
deleted by creator
You would think someone who has surely faced so much discrimination would be less of a bigot.
Are they going to call it Cabracadabra?
This is, quite literally, a comically bad idea. This has literally been used as a punchline in fiction.
Been a while since I watched it - remind me how Cabracadabra failed?
I understand the reasoning and positivity behind this and I do believe it comes from a really good place, it may even be beneficial to customers, but it is gender discrimination in the workplace, whether it leads to mostly positive outcomes for some people or not.
If your employees bring in different amounts of money because you’ve started to split their available workloads based on gender (especially in an industry where gender has no impact on one’s ability to do the job), you’re now likely to decide that due to this trend over time, to discriminate further, prioritising the more popular genders over others when hiring, and when firing, and when deciding wages.
After all, if one gender brings in less profits consistently than the others - because they’re stifled by company policy - why pay them as much? It makes business sense to pay them what they’re worth, and they’re measurably worth less than the other genders, now.
It’s a slippery slope. Well intentioned, but damages equality in the workplace.
Agreed. I 100% understand the rationale, but it has troubling implications. It only takes the one bad guy, but there are 25 other guys driving that night who would either be friendly or happily ignore you the whole ride.
I’d be interested in reading a breakdown of riders and drivers by gender in some representative areas. What I see this doing is, first yes, giving women and non-binary people an increased sense of safety (which I want to stress is still extremely important). But what I also see is an overall decline in service quality for women and non-binary people. Anecdote, not data, but I’ve used Lyft hundreds of times over the years in different cities. I’ve been picked up by maybe 3 people who weren’t [presumably, I didn’t ask] male identifying. On top of this, there is the possibility of certain genders earning more purely on the basis of gender. Remember - this is a bad thing for gender equality.
Something that might be better is an opt-in program with enhanced background checks, mandatory cab cameras designed to be difficult for your average person to fuck with some system for mandatory upload/secure storage of the footage, and other stuff along these lines. Do all these, regardless of gender, and you get a Secure Ride badge. The difficulty is the process and the knowledge you are under MUCH closer scrutiny. The prize is (potentially) access to a bigger piece of that that day’s possible revenue.
I don’t think the above is perfect, but they’re steps towards a better system not based on gender lines among contractors.
Now, if they were treated like honest to god employees, this kind of thing might be easier to implement. Food for thought, Lyft.
Edit: Another thing that I think would be useful in general is a safety rating system on top of the other metrics. Have users provide anonymized data visible on the driver’s profile about how safe they felt their ride was in general. Though admittedly I can see ways this could be abused or made un-useful. But I’ve personally been in situations where I did NOT feel safe, and would have rated them poorly in this area - but otherwise they got me home in one piece, and the reason I felt they were unsafe was they busted their ass all day and were almost nodding off.
In this situation, knowing how ratings play into Lyft and thinking about causes, my rating did not accurately reflect my actual sense of safety. An anonymous safety rating option, with comment, would have been appreciated.
What’s next? The “no blacks” option? I’m sure you can find studies to validate that fear too.
Lately we seem to be going backwards in equality. Men are getting shat on, especially those that haven’t even committed the atrocities they are being punished for.
Why pick and choose who can use the feature to request gender. Make it fair and allow everyone or none.
There’s a lot to unpack here…
But mostly I suggest you learn about the difference in equity and equality.
Equality (what you are arguing for) is treating people the same.
Equity (what this feature promotes) is giving people what they need to be successful.
Equality aims to promote fairness, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same help. Equity appears unfair, but it actively moves everyone closer to success by “leveling the playing field.”
Equity involves trying to understand and give people what they need to enjoy full, successful lives. Equality, in contrast, aims to give everyone the same thing, which does not work to create a more equal society, only to preserve the status quo, in the presence of systemic inequalities.
Given that violent crime in the ride share industry is committed almost universally by men and disproportionately against women, this feature aims to provide equity to support more women as both riders and drivers.
Now, I dare you to apply the same logic to black driver vs. white.
Sure.
Are black drivers disproportionately affected by problems in the ride share industry? Yes. Let’s fix that!
this feature aims to provide equity to support more women as both riders and drivers.
it aims to provide equity, but through a really shitty and half-assed method that results in systemic discrimination
Lyft could be vetting their drivers, taking a hardline approach on drivers which are reported, a trusted driver program, etc, anything that would actually be protecting vulnerable people from abusers, but instead went with the easiest most simple minded approach (which also doesn’t protect any vulnerable men) because they have no problem treating their drivers like shit
deleted by creator
Equity is antithetical to equality. They are oppositional ideals. Either you aim to provide equal opportunity for everyone, or you intentionally limit opportunity to ensure equal outcomes. Democracy and multiculturalism is premised on equality. It seeks to ensure the right of different groups to behave differently and arrive at different outcomes. For example, Asian high-school students spend significantly more time studying and doing homework than any other ethnic or racial group. You can verify these stats yourself by going to the cited source. Unsurprisingly, this group earns more, has higher employment, and lower crime.
Equity, on the other hand, is authoritarian. To use the example above, it means either forcing Asian children to study less, or forcing children of other ethnicities to study more. There is no room for cultural differences or free expression. Equity is only achievable under an authoritarian system, because in order to achieve it, it requires ensuring every child has exactly the same experience in life. The same amount of homework. The same schools. The same friends and family. The same sports and extracurricular activities. The same hobbies. They must study the same subjects in school and universities. It requires complete homogeneity. No modern society wants this, and the use of the term “equity” is deeply alarming to anyone who considers themselves democratic or liberal in the classical sense.
Right. And don’t forget to address the issue of them all being differently situated as a starting condition. You’ll have to kneecap some and put others on wheels.
Lol no.
Equity in this case is providing additional opportunities for education to those who need it.
Equity in this case is providing additional opportunities for education to those who need it.
That would be equality. Everyone given the same opportunity to benefit from resources on the basis of need. Equity would be providing additional resources to people on the basis of race, for example, irrespective of their need. The purpose of which to ensure outcomes are equitable.
Again, no.
Equity is explicitly about need. Equality is irrespective of need. This is literally the definition I gave at the start of this discussion.
Obviously to enact equitable policies, you can’t handle things on a case-by-case basis, because that doesn’t scale. You have to find metrics that correlate with need. The only policies that scale are those that target cohorts rather than individuals.
In the example of school funding, reasonable cohorts can be derived from income level and relatedly (for historical reasons in the US) race.
- An equitable policy would be to provide additional school funding to impoverished communities.
- An equal policy would be to provide the same funding to all communities.
- An unequal policy would be to provide funding in accordance with something inversely proportional to need, like property value.
- An oblivious policy would be to provide funding in accordance with something orthogonal to need, like the day of the week.
In the case of ride-share safety for both riders and drivers, gender is a decent axis for defining cohorts.
Maybe I am missing this in the article but which education is being provided by Lyft?
You gave an example of a school. It’s really obvious that the above poster was addressing the example that you gave.
That wasn’t clear to me but thanks for clarifying. I’ll edit my comment above.
If you are providing additional X to a subset of people it is by definition not equality. The two are jot compatible.
Why not just not allow men to be drivers? Problem solved, equity maximized.
Neither “equality” nor “equity” involve any amount of equality, equity, fairness, nor justice of any kind. They’re all hot garbage.
What people need is freedom and liberty maximized, and artificial barriers removed. And don’t expect equal outcomes.
Kinda telling this was your first comment when it’s about women’s safety and the rising number of abuses women have faced as passengers from the men driving.
Were you trying to miss the point or are you just naturally dumb?
Kinda telling this was your first comment when it’s about
women’swhite’s safety and the rising number of abuseswomenwhites have faced as passengers from themenblacks driving.Go on then, show us your racist study published by a reputable source.
Go on then, show us your sexist study published by a reputable source.
The person your replying to isn’t actually commenting on race, you just failed to understand their point.
I could show you a study showing that black people commit every single crime on earth and it wouldn’t make disceiminating against them any less racist.
You seem to be the only person arguing for that though.
Removed by mod
This is the dumbest take I’ve seen. What are you even getting on about. This is just rancid bigotry veiled as concern.
What are you even basing this on? Are you afraid of black people? Or do you just hate the LGBTQIA+ community and women? Or are you still privileged as one of those two that you don’t use Uber and are just spreading shits because you can?
Why not let men do the same thing?
It might have something to do with women being at a higher risk of being abused. But unless you’ve been living under a rock you already knew that. So what are you really asking?
deleted by creator
(numbers pulled out of my ass, but…)
99% of men don’t need it so won’t use it. 99% of the remainder will use it to find a target to harass. Whoever is left might miss out on a great feature, but they’re barely a rounding error.
Personally, I’d love a feature that let me pick a driver that would just shut up.
It’s discrimination when a man does it
/s
What do men have to fear?
Getting shot, stabbed, robbed, beaten, choked, ganged up on, sexually assaulted. Weird, the exact same list that women have to fear.
Oh except men also have to worry about being falsely accused of sexual misconduct, having their names put on the sex offender registry and the entire rest of their lives ruined because no one will believe them.
Okay, well let me ask a question…
If a person identifies as non-binary, then what fucking business they got asking me my gender?
because someone else being non-binary doesn’t make you non-binary?
they’re not saying no one is allowed a gender, or that other people don’t have genders
they’re saying their gender is a different one beyond the usual two.
like how you don’t have to just choose between vanilla or chocolate because strawberry also exists.
Can a male driver, then, identify himself as non-binary? Say that he does this to avoid all the hassle and possible loss of income caused by a form of workplace gender discrimination.
By the way, you’re not supposed to ask why one is non-binary, right?
yeah you’re not also supposed to ask why someone is a certain race, religion, height, weight etc
and lol at the idea of being non binary is “less hassle”
Look, ‘non-binary’, whatever the hell that’s supposed to even mean, basically adds up to ‘I don’t want to tell you what my body structure is’
If someone doesn’t want to reveal their gender to me, hey no problem by me. But privacy is a two way street ya know. What business do ‘non-binary’ people have asking anyone else about their sex/gender?
Non-binary has nothing to do with secrecy? It’s a catch all term for genders that don’t fall under the man or woman category. It pretty much means they don’t identify as a man or a woman but as something else, there are many other identities a person may have
i don’t think it’s hard to divine the meaning of “non” - it means not
and binary means “choice between two options”
put together it means “not one of the two options.”
I believe I already covered your other points (as did the other person replying), but they did reveal their gender.
Consider this: It’s more like
“Did you watch the soccer or tennis match last nigjt?”
“I don’t really like sports, I watched a movie instead”
“why are you keeping it a secret whether you watched the soccer or tennis?”
Its not a secret, there just happens to be more than two choices.
“is your name John or Christopher?”
“neither its David”
“why are you keeping your name a secret!”
etc
I’m just here for my popcorn and comment entertainment. Which did not disappoint
Before Covid a number of companies offering female drivers for female riders popped up.
Here one, Nash Pink Ride, that just recently started:
That’s really bullshit. This result will be that every male drivers will become non binary to not be discriminated by the customers.
This is not because some suffer that it is correct to punish an entire gender for that.
Lyft announces new feature: Separate, but equal.
Let’s see how this plays out for them.
deleted by creator
If a system is bad for women we blame the the system, if a system is bad for men we blame the men.
?
Cool, now both Lyft and Uber need a “no extra conversation” option too. I don’t want to talk to the driver when I use rideshares, I hate the incessant small talk they want me to be a part of. I know some people might like it or at the very least not mind it, but I absolutely can’t stand it 9 times out of 10. Give me the option to specifically not have it please.
Locking this discussion because you guys just can’t keep it civil. These comments (and the many that had to be removed) just prove the point of the article.
All the dudes complaining in here are the epitome of “wanting to be oppressed so bad”. So much invalidation of women’s experiences and trauma from harassment and abuse. I knew many Lemmy users were weird but God damn bro, y’all make Redditors look like saints. Until my partner stops constantly being stared at by perverted men on an almost weekly basis, I’ll keep letting women decide who they’re comfortable to be around.
deleted by creator
As a man, it’s honestly quite embarrassing some of these comments. My gf is tiny and one of my best friends is also a tiny woman. They endure so much shit on a daily basis without even discussing how imposing men can be in an enclosed area like a cab. I wonder how many of them in here whining are creepers themselves
deleted by creator
“I’ll keep letting women decide who they’re comfortable to be around.”
Show me one comment in this thread that contradicts this statement. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Thats right, you can’t. Because no one here is actually saying the thing you’re accusing them of saying. You’ve done nothing but build your own strawman and tear it right back down. Congratulations, I guess?
Should I do that so they have a real fight instead of strawman?
I’ll keep letting women decide who they’re comfortable to be around
That’s kind of a red herring from “a corporation providing systemic discrimination”
Not to mention the fact that no one in this thread is even disagreeing with that sentiment.
