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submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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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[-] FoundTheVegan@kbin.social 125 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] Cleverdawny@lemm.ee 43 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure how blatantly enabling sex discrimination is going to help things here.

[-] FoundTheVegan@kbin.social 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well, then you are just being willfully ignorant because I already typed out why getting in to a cab is scary. Features like this are going to help women choose what type of situation they are putting themselves in. Say whatever you like about women being to use a gun/knife too, but assault and sexual assaults happen, the average man is stronger than the average woman and being in a confined space with a stranger is putting yourself at risk. Women are at a greater risk then men, so should have greater control how they handle those interactions.

[-] Cleverdawny@lemm.ee 27 points 1 year ago

Then Lyft should focus on driver quality rather than enabling blatantly illegal sex discrimination.

[-] cazsiel@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

In what way is this illegal?

[-] Cleverdawny@lemm.ee 29 points 1 year ago

1964 civil rights act, discrimination based on sex. Pretty obvious case of it.

[-] thoro@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is it illegal to choose your primary care physician based on gender? Maybe I'm not reading this entirely correctly, but why would it be illegal to similarly choose your ride driver by gender?

Wouldn't discrimination be more if Lyft refused to hire male drivers or something to that effect according to the civil rights act?

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[-] orangebussycat@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] darq@kbin.social 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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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[-] Cynoid@lemm.ee 18 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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[-] aard@kyu.de 113 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 1 year ago

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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[-] TenderfootGungi@lemmy.world 69 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

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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[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Well you see, most people aren't assholes.

[-] moog@lemm.ee 27 points 1 year ago

assholes are the only reason this feature exists

[-] darkevilmac@lemmy.zip 20 points 1 year ago

Yes but the assholes are the ones that tend to take advantage of things like this.

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[-] obinice@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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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[-] paultimate14@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] Spendrill@lemm.ee 40 points 1 year ago
[-] TheYear2525@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

And I could do the same for any given race.

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[-] Zomg@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago

Why not let men do the same thing?

[-] zaph@sh.itjust.works 44 points 1 year ago

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?

[-] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 year ago

Higher risk for woman of being abused does not mean that for man of being abused is 0.

I don't understand why if something bad is more propably to happed to woman we make special exception in the rules just to exclude man of this protection.

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

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[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 16 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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[-] Eder@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] mrnotoriousman@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 18 points 1 year ago

I'm a man, and even I find many men to be uncomfortable to be around with how they talk about women, gays and trans people. Other men are the primary reason why I often feel ashamed to be male.

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[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] popololote@lemmings.world 16 points 1 year ago

Maybe it's about men preferring female drivers and making it harder for other to get them. Woman may request a female driver to feel safer but men provably don't do it so much for that reason.

[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 44 points 1 year ago

It specifically says it lets riders request a driver matching their own gender, not any gender you want.

[-] Willy@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago
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[-] You_are_dust@lemm.ee 25 points 1 year ago

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?

[-] darkstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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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[-] TruTollTroll@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Yoldark@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago

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.

If a system is bad for women we blame the the system, if a system is bad for men we blame the men.

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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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