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.
That’s fucking sexist hate speech. Any time you’re gonna say something about a group of people, just change the group name to “jews” and see how it sounds. If it sounds wrong when you say that sentence about jews, then it’s wrong when you say that sentence about anyone.
That sounds like a nice platitude until you think about it for more than two seconds.
I don’t think many will find this that objectionable.
Now, you’ll probably point out that there’s a difference between (mostly) immutable characteristics and political behavior, and I’d agree with that. Political violence is inherently problematic, while sheer the act of being a man is not.
However, while a bit over broadly phrased, the act of being a man isn’t really what’s being criticized. It’s harassment, violence, and apathetic tolerance of these by men that’s the actual core problem. There is absolutely a valid discussion that can be had about how appropriate or rational it is to conflate every individual man with the group as a whole, but particularly when it comes to matters of personal safety, rationality goes out the window and emotions rule the day. A woman can know that any individual man is unlikely to misbehave, but when she’s experienced an extensive amount of harassment - and essentially all women have - there’s going to be a negative association there simply from human nature.
So again, whether or not a policy like this is an appropriate response (or even legal) to the problem of women feeling threatened by men is something that can be discussed. But I think the far more important conversation to have is why women even feel threatened by men in the first place, and that, like it or not, is because of men’s behavior as a group. The way for that to change is for those problematic men, who are of course generally a minority, to cut their shit and for them to not be tolerated by other men. Otherwise, the fundamental problem will still be there, and the best we’ll ever be able to muster is a series of messy and unfair band-aids.