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.
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.
I’m a bisexual non binary black person. I do understand the anxiety discriminated groups face, but that’s not an excuse to discriminate even more. We should look at the root causes of the violence and solve those rather than just discriminate even more and just let the issue get worse.
Editing this as a reply to the comment below because this thread got locked and I believe it harmful to ignore the fact that we do know the causes and how to solve them without discrimination
The root causes are societal pressures towards boys doing violent things I.e. military, police aswell as a societal acceptance of male violence “oh boys will be boys” and male loneliness and the inability to open up. The practical measures are not discriminate more. I’m curious abt how enbys or trans people who don’t visually transition would fit into this system. Creeps would have 0 issues just saying they’re enby or trans and I doubt they’d even mind cross dressing if it meant they could.creep more effectively.
The issue is creeps, not men and this doesnt solve that issue. We need to get rid of creeps by changing the societal causes and giving them mental support when needed as we should everyone.
I mean I agree we should look into the root causes. But practically that is a long-term, society-wide project. We don’t even know what the root causes are, let alone how to address them. And moreover that project is not one a ride-share company can address.
So we sometimes have to take less-than-ideal, but more practical measures to address the current situation, right?
