this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This feature also has the potential of endangering those drivers. If I were a driver I'd definitely not opt in to a function like this.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was gonna say, regardless of weather or not it provides more good than bad, it puts the driver in a position to be a target.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (26 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Couldn't broke drivers just self-identify as non-binary for more money?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I don't doubt you had terrible experiences related to sexual harassment, and I'm sorry for you. Nobody deserve this.

But don't try to muddle the issue here. You have been attacked by people. And you decided that the pertinent group to understand these attacks is their gender, so we need to differentiate on this basis. You could have analyzed it along education level, wealth, apparent race, apparent religion, social persona, zodiacal type, car brand, profession, haircut, or anything else.

But you chose to judge the risk level of people based on their gender. Because you think that, for some reason, you have a much clearer perspective than other people you know litterally nothing about but their gender. It is the exact same thing that makes people discriminate others about the color of their skin, or wealth, or any of the illegal type of discrimination. You are using the same logic, and by extension, you are legitimazing it. There's a reason discrimination laws do a blanket ban of this kind of thing, and not "some genders/races/others are more protected than others" : it's because every use of every kind of this arbitrary categorization strengthen every other.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (17 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Technically nothing. There is no gatekeeping in being non-binary along the lines of presentation. But you claiming this as a passenger does not effect the other passengers who are made to feel safer by the adoption of this option. A fair number of female drivers in the service are also still likely to drive for male clients regularly anyway.

However if all drivers have protections for drivers to shut down abuses by scummy clients who use the opportunity of a temporarily captive audience to be disgusting towards drivers then this overall becomes less of a concern.

Almost all forms of accommodation leave certain paths open for abuse by bad actors. Erring on the side of the person who needs additional help participating in society is usually the more ethical choice because while a bad actor can be a pain there's usually already laws on the books or policies that can be enacted that allow you to deal with one. For the person seeking accommodation the cost of not having access can mean the world becomes a smaller and/or more dangerous place because of reasons that have nothing to do with them. In some ways that can emotionally be looked at as "letting the assholes win".

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (22 children)

That's a neat feature; I wonder why it's explicitly not available to men (who would prefer a male driver for whatever reason)... I guess maybe they feel that would go against the stated goal of encouraging more women to sign up as drivers, but like... why? If nothing else, men with a preference for male drivers would ensure that more women / non-binary folks could get drivers matching their gender, since as they note there's far more non-male riders than drivers.

I also wonder if it gives non-male drivers the option to only accept riders who match their gender, which it seems would be the more important facet to encouraging non-male drivers, if safety concerns are the reason they're not signing up to do so.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (7 children)
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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Oh boy, can't wait until they do that for race.

What an idiotic idea.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Why not let men do the same thing?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (21 children)

It might have something to do with women being at a higher risk of being abused. But unless you've been living under a rock you already knew that. So what are you really asking?

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (24 children)

Because women have to fear men more than men have to fear women.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

(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.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, well let me ask a question...

If a person identifies as non-binary, then what fucking business they got asking me my gender?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

So this feature is matching with someone of the same gender only. That's the impression this gives. So women with women, nonbinary to nonbinary. Ok. Why are men cut off if that's the case? How many more lines of code could it possibly be to just implement it for everyone instead of specifically choosing to exclude people? It would be the exact same PR if it was made available to everyone. There's zero reason this couldn't just be implemented universally. In terms of this making things safer or more comfortable, couldn't someone that is a slimeball just lie? The article says you have to choose your gender. What is actually stopping someone from misusing this?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I doubt exclusion of men from this feature has anything to do with it being more work to add men. Hell, it's actually LESS work to enable it for everyone than it is to add exclusions. Excluding men was a business decision, I'm sure.

Now, I'm in the privileged position of being male, so take this with a grain of salt, but I entirely disagree with the blatant sexism of this feature. I get the purpose, but it feels horribly misguided. Can women not commit violent or sexual crimes? Can nonbinary people not commit violent or sexual crimes? Only men can apparently commit these crimes, according to the people who thought this feature up. Sexual crimes by women, for example, go wildly underreported..Even if they were using statistics to justify how they implemented this feature, they didn't do their homework.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (37 children)

What's next? The "no blacks" option? I'm sure you can find studies to validate that fear too.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (40 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (19 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now, I dare you to apply the same logic to black driver vs. white.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I'm just here for my popcorn and comment entertainment. Which did not disappoint

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Before Covid a number of companies offering female drivers for female riders popped up.

Here one, Nash Pink Ride, that just recently started:

https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/new-rideshare-company-aims-to-help-women-feel-safer-in-nashville/

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