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Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

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Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#71

Post by brookst »

marky1991 wrote: post #24
xenospn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is as discriminatory as choosing strawberry ice cream over chocolate. To say, not at all.

What is your justification for that? If an employer did the same thing, would you argue that's also not discriminatory? Or, to pick a notorious example, if a cake shop only agreed to sell to straight couples, would that be the same? If not, why not?

You mean a cake brokerage or something?

These platforms connect service providers and consumers. That should be obvious, I think.

A better challenge would be if these same platforms allowed racial selections. Which I think everyone would be uncomfortable with in a way “let women avoid men” does not evoke.

Probably because of motivation. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of racially motivated bad behavior on these platforms, but there certainly is for gender-based bad behavior[1]

So the apparently-similar hyptothetixal is not that similar, though still useful for rhetoric.

1. https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?... (Page 20)

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#72

Post by gmueckl »

xenospn wrote: post #8

That might be tough - I remember having plenty of women drivers back in 2012 when uber and Lyft just got started. These days they’re extremely rare.

This might be mitigated somewhat by offering female drivers a similar options to limit themselves to female passengers. It would ovviously only work whwre demand is actually high enough.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#73

Post by commandlinefan »

mholm wrote: post #4

Unfortunately necessary. Essentially every girl I know has had at least one bad experience with a creepy uber driver. These are people that are entering their address and often their workplace into the app. It's a big reason why a lot of my friends are picking Waymos instead.

> picking Waymos instead.

Can you pick Waymos? I was in Austin with my daughter who Ubers quite a bit (because dear God there's nowhere to park in that damned city) this weekend. She called an Uber and a Waymo showed up and she was grateful because she prefers them too, but she said that she's not aware of a way to specify that you just want a Waymo.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#74

Post by EGreg »

marky1991 wrote: post #24
xenospn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is as discriminatory as choosing strawberry ice cream over chocolate. To say, not at all.

What is your justification for that? If an employer did the same thing, would you argue that's also not discriminatory? Or, to pick a notorious example, if a cake shop only agreed to sell to straight couples, would that be the same? If not, why not?

My libertarian view on discrimination (independent of the Civil Rights Act) is this:

If a service is not widely available in the region, any systematic discrimination leading to refusing to provide service, or specific level of service or care, based on anything unrelated to the ability to provide it, should be illegal, locally, in that community. Rules like ousting disruptive customers apply across the board.

If a service is widely available, however, then “x-only” service providers should be allowed to operate (as indeed they are with women-only gyms, Jewish-only clubs, or nightclubs that let women in first and charge the men) as long as they advertise it up front and not make people go there only to find out that “ladies can go in free of charge, men pay $300 for a table with bottle service”

PS: replace “ladies” and “men” with “whites” and “blacks” and hear how that sounds. And no, citing crime or violence statistics shouldn’t play a role in shaping whether people can get into places, whether it’s women citing male vs bear violence / harassment or people citing racial FBI statistics on violence / harassment. This is the prosecutor’s fallacy.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#75

Post by gchamonlive »

taurath wrote: post #37
SoftTalker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

When faced with the choice of trusting a stranger, you turned it down, then made the decision about the lack of trust in the world? Trust in strangers has never been easy in the US. If something is to change, it has to start individually.

This falls into the domain of the ethics of care. Sure change needs to start some place, but it doesn't need to be done recklessly. Nobody does anybody any favours by putting themselves in dangerous situations. To care for other people, to give them the attention they need you need to prepare yourself for it first.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#76

Post by OkayPhysicist »

commandlinefan wrote: post #73
mholm wrote: post #4

Unfortunately necessary. Essentially every girl I know has had at least one bad experience with a creepy uber driver. These are people that are entering their address and often their workplace into the app. It's a big reason why a lot of my friends are picking Waymos instead.

> picking Waymos instead. Can you pick Waymos? I was in Austin with my daughter who Ubers quite a bit (because dear God there's nowhere to park in that damned city) this weekend. She called an Uber and a Waymo showed up and she was grateful because she prefers them too, but she said that she's not aware of a way to specify that you just want a Waymo.

Here in the Bay Area, Waymo is a separate app, not integrated into Uber like it is in Austin.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#77

Post by allreduce »

irl_zebra wrote: post #32
SoftTalker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This incident is creepy enough that I would also not agree to a give a random stranger a ride home, absent any additional context or mitigations. Maybe to avoid waking up in an ice bath with my liver gone. But, to not give a ride because of some perceived idea that they would claim you assaulted them or something is a bit "this person should go touch some grass" or whatever.

I've got to ask. Is this kind of violent crime common or perceived as common in the US? If a stranger asked me for a ride home here my first thought wouldn't be that they want to attack me.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#78

Post by nicce »

jlawson wrote: post #45
maest wrote: post #2

Does this mean women drivers will command higher rates?

It'd be hilarious if women formed their own closed rideshare economy; they'd discover that they demand much higher prices from each other than they get from men.

Happened already in Finland. See Club WOWO Oy.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#79

Post by ryandrake »

_cenw wrote: post #12
mothballed wrote: post #5

[flagged]

That's not even as close to as smart of a gotcha as you think it is.

Everyone is dunking on this, but nobody is really answering why offering a filter based on race (or religion, for that matter) isn't OK, but filtering on gender is OK.

Re: Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US

#80

Post by baggy_trough »

wosined wrote: post #58
glouwbug wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women's only gyms and hours exist already. If there's a need, and they feel safer this way, let them have it

Why does the same argument never work in reverse? When men want something for themselves then the same people say that that would be sexist.

We are all equal; it's just that some are more equal than others.
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