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.
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.
Two people literally disagree with you that women should feel safe.
This is why these options are now available to 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.
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.
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+
Oh please.
You know perfectly well it’s not a controversial opinion.
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.
Lemmy is filled with men right activists and misogynists that don’t hide.
If it wasn’t controversial MRA wouldn’t exist lol
Right, every single woman on the planet has had multiple uncomfortable, or even dangerous or violent, interactions with men, but people in this thread are pretending that it’s outrageous that someone is acknowledging that very obvious and well-known fact.
I’m a man, and I don’t blame women at all for avoiding us. I don’t know why every woman isn’t a lesbian. Men are generally awful.
I think the issue people are taking is with collective punishment and validating prejudice.
Well said, complete and concise.
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.
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.