All-Female Ridesharing To Debut In Boston (qz.com)

HughPickens.com writes: Scores of women have reported assaults by Uber drivers... Now Jenni Avins reports at Quartz that a ride-sharing service that only uses women as drivers, Chariot for Women, is set to launch April 19 in Boston, featuring more stringent background checks and additional steps to ensure riders correctly match with their drivers.... "[U]nlike other services, Chariot for Women features a patent-pending technology that will provide both users and drivers with a code after a request is made that will need to be verified upon starting the ride," reports Glamour. But "whether it's legal or not is a different question," says Joseph L. Sulman. Quartz reports that "According to civil rights lawyers, Chariot for Women's female-only policies could put it squarely in the crosshairs of gender discrimination lawsuits, which would be difficult to win." Founder Michael Pelletz says he welcomes the legal challenge. "We want to show there's inequality in safety in our industry," says Pelletz. "We hope to go to the US Supreme Court to say that if there's safety involved, there's nothing wrong with providing a service for women."

Comments

This will be fun

[rossz]

I can't wait until someone claims they identify as female and demand the right to rideshare with the all female service.

Re:This will be fun

[PopeRatzo]

Source?

You must be joking. You might as well have asked a golden retriever to solve a partial differential equation.

Re:This will be fun

[roman_mir]

OK, isn't it interesting though that the same type of service aimed only at white customers or only for a specific religion would cause a massive outcry and also would be illegal?

Re:This will be fun

[AnontheDestroyer]

Sorry for all the other Anonymous Cowards out there. This stuff is painful to read even as a cis-male (to use a term that will infuriate a few people).

That said, even as a very liberal person, I've always wondered what mechanisms are in place to keep assholes from screwing it all up. E.g., I don't know if there is a way to verify whether an individual has started the process, or if there even should be. I'm very uneducated in this area.

Re:This will be fun

[Crashmarik]

Some animals are more equal than others.

On a more direct note, did you expect integrity or consistency from people that define merit as meaningless ?

Re:This will be fun

[ooloorie]

I believe people who believe in that kind of social engineering are applying some advanced math. They start with categorizing people based on overlapping criteria, such as sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. Based on these criteria, they classify people into "victims" and "oppressors". When people are both, they call that "intersectionality" and attempt to balance it out. Experts assign scores and weights. For example, white homosexual cis males have now apparently moved into the "oppressor" category.

I blame New Math and the attempts at teaching abstract set theory to budding sociologists for this.

Re:This will be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, isn't it interesting though that the same type of service aimed only at white customers or only for a specific religion would cause a massive outcry ...

For certain definitions of "massive outry", true. But it's hard for people to argue their own discriminatory actions "for security" (ie safety) and then simultaneously argue that a woman-only service is somehow not okay. So, the people left are those that (1) think women can and are as bad as men and/or (2) think fundamentally this is no real sort of solution to a more fundamental problem (a lack of adequate background checks at Uber) that basically degenerates into "men are expendable".

... and also would be illegal?

And of course it's illegal. I hope they get slapped down fast and hard by the courts on this. Btw, I think it funny that impetus for this was a male Uber driver feeling threatened by a passenger. So, (1) we are now creating a service that makes it easier to target female drivers and (2) we're not even addressing the idea of background checks for passengers. So, entirely ass backwards.

Re:This will be fun

[LaurenCates]

From a medical standpoint - while acknowledging that being trans is NOT a disability - it should be illegal to ask.

That having been said, people fuck shit up for other people all the time. My father was a diabetic and had a handicapped placard to hang from his rear-view mirror because of problems with his legs so he could take advantage of handicapped parking. Generally speaking, you'd never know just by looking at him, though to observe him moving, you might notice there's something wrong with him, but because he didn't have a cane or a wheelchair, wouldn't you know it that someone would come over and confront him about fraudulently using a placard like the one he had, and wouldn't quit harassing him about it, either.

So, yeah, the problem here is the grey area that exists when either a lie could be told, for reasons good or bad, or people are untrusting enough to assume the worst and make accusations before understanding the gravity of the situation.

But that requires a lot of inappropriate unpacking of personal information to complete strangers...which is why I think all-female ridesharing (unlike handicapped parking) is simply a bad idea. It just sets up a lot of unnecessary drama in an age where the lines of gender are blurry, but there seems to be a continuing assumption that a not insignificant number of men are potential predators. These two issues, when taken together, are a powder keg of potential conflict.

Re:This will be fun

[frovingslosh]

A quick scan of local on-line arrest records shows a majority of blacks committing violent crimes even though the black population is a minority. So the next logical step will be a white only version of Uber. Just for safety purposes, of course.

Re:This will be fun

[ewibble]

I know you disagree with this and so do I. I would like point out that blacks are more likely be arrested for the same crime, and given a harsher penalty.

However I have heard similar statistics for males and violence. Men are more likely to be arrested for domestic violence even if they where the ones that called the police in the first place. I am sure that it is much less likely that a man would report violence against him committed by a woman. Women also have a tendency to pick men that stronger than them as partners, it is hard to physically intimidate a person stronger than you. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in the US 76.8% murder victims are men, I pick murder because it is unlikely to go unreported. Although this could also be perpetrated by men, mens lives are clearly more dangerous.

While we continue to assume men are somehow bad, and are so dangerous, it is fair to not even let them into the same car as a woman just because they are a man we will only alienate more men. This will only cause men to dislike women more. I am sure black people where considered somehow bad, or somehow somehow worse than white people. That was racism them and this is sexism now.

If you want a "safer" uber service then you can have a service that does security checks on all its customers, and drivers. That way you are judged on your previous actions, not the genitals you where born with.

Re:This will be fun

[ShanghaiBill]

By the same token, female police officers are 5 times more likely to resort to using their firearm, and their partner is twice as likely to be hurt on the job.

Source?

A quick Google search will bring up several citations that female cops are less likely to shoot. But I could only find one citation from Ann Coulter that women are "vastly more likely" to shoot. I suppose that counts as a negative citation, since if Ann Coulter claims something is true, it usually isn't.

Re:This will be fun

[Maxo-Texas]

Why can't small males avail themselves of the service but to female MMA fighters who could whip the males in a fight can? Small males get assaulted, bullied, and even raped as well.

Re:This will be fun

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Real Christians who made a Christian-preaching cab service would probably prefer non-Christians.

It's against what Jesus said to harm non-Christians. You are to lead by example of being kind. That's what most of these hardcore Christians don't seem to understand about theeir own religion.

Re: This will be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Because what someone does as a part of their morning routine has nothing to do with ride sharing.

Re: This will be fun

[LaurenCates]

This is true, but in the name of liberty and personal privacy, it should, frankly, be none of anyone else's damn business.

If you're transgender, good! Live your life! If you are happy, and you're not doing anything that hurts anyone, congrats, you're probably well ahead of at least half the human population.

However, absolutely NO ONE should have the authority demand "papers, please" on that particular condition. Thus, it presents a problem when any male-presenting man asks for a ride in a female-only rideshare claiming to be a pre-transition MtoF and the woman driving says "hold on, prove it". How do you do that without creating a situation where the woman won't feel threatened (by a potential liar) and the man won't feel discriminated against?

The answer's simple: don't create a situation where discrimination is implicit within the ground rules.

Re:This will be fun

[markdavis]

>"That's what most of these hardcore Christians don't seem to understand about theeir own religion."

That is because most so-called Christians really are not very Christian. They don't follow the teachings and examples of Jesus, but instead follow organized religion, dogma, and related politics. And they also tend to look at the mostly supplanted old testament for answers to questions that are more easily answered by that famous and simple saying "what would Jesus do?"

Re:This will be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you assholes ruining this site? Go back to Reddit.

Re:This will be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

As a straight, white, born and gendered male, and human oriented person (compared to furies?), I'd really appreciate if ladies would stop going around putting the fear of men into everyone's heads. If you're concerned for your safety, take a martial arts class and learn some personal responsibility (don't expect someone to help you when you cry for help, you need to learn how to help yourself. In other words, stop being a victim and man up. By not punching that guy who grabbed your ass, you're choosing to stay a victim. The slight natural strength benefits of being male is nothing compared to a couple basic self defense classes, often offered for free to college women.) Segregating people like this only leads to more issues as people stop seeing others as people when they're always kept apart. They lose respect for each other. What this service tells me is that all the people using it are too emotionally weak to be around men regardless if that's true or not. I'm sure some of those creepy males will love this as they can now order a ride and know they will get a female driver. I suspect its far easier to kidnap someone when you're not the one doing the driving.

Yes, I've had my ass randomly spanked and my nipples twisted. Differently not a common occurrence, but I also didn't ignore it.

And please, no bullshit about how the media only portrays females as sex objects. Every kids show has ball smashing as something funny. All males in computer games are tight-muscled, super alpha males. Males are shown as bumbling idiots anytime a female is around. We're either a sexy crime lord or a fart loving failure at life. Etc... The media is simply for anything that triggers an emotion in its viewers.

Re:This will be fun

[AK Marc]

There are some who deliberately go to bathrooms to rape people (though fewer of them than republican senators, even though there are far more trans people than republican senators).

I thought that most of those who go to bathrooms to rape people were Republican senators.

Re: This will be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Because women are valuable, men are expendable. Didn't you get the memo?

Re: This will be fun

[AK Marc]

When you identify as a male to your wife and family, and identify as a female only at sports events, it's obvious that you don't identify as female, but are doing so at a point in time for some other reason. Nobody is telling you that you aren't properly identifying as something, but that when you do so inconsistently, you shouldn't be treated the same as someone that is consistent.

Re:This will be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'll have those niggers voting democrat for the next hundred years" -LBJ

Re: This will be fun

[BarbaraHudson]

No, it's illegal because you can't use statistics to discriminate against a class of people. That's why police profiling, etc are against the law. Far better to require a barrier between the front and back seats if you are that worried, or just a video record of everything going on. Or use a real taxi service that does its job without regards to sex, handicap, etc and won't refuse to pick up a woman if she's with a man.

Re: This will be fun

[karmatic]

You seem to believe that transsexualism is a mental disorder.

It is, and it shares a number of characteristics with Body Dysmorphic Disorder. It tends to describe symptoms (rather than a specific underlying etiology), though there is a reasonable amount of information that suggests that in some of the cases it's related to disruption of the prenatal testosterone washes in the womb, leading to desires for behaviour (and identification) often seen in the other sex. In animal models, this tends to manifest as behaviour such as male rats exhibiting female mating and nesting patterns.

A conflict between one's brain and body will cause problems (something seen even in individuals in supportive environments), which makes it a disorder. Likewise, it's situated in the brain (as the body itself is generally in line with the chromosomes) - the brain improperly rejects the body in which it's housed. That's a mental disorder.

The American Psychiatric Association

Rather than pointing out that your argument is an argument from authority, I would point out that the APA does not get to define whether or not something is a disorder. Homosexuality (for example) didn't magically become "not a disorder" in 1973. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes political lobbying, and despite being a professional body, there is a lot of politics in play.

There are a significant number of individuals pushed into transition unnecessarily (particularly in the butch lesbian community), and there are plenty of cases where people would have been better off without transitioning. It's a very high price to pay for many people, and while it may be worth it for some, that is not always the case. Rushing people into it with "it's not a disorder, it's all normal, and healthy, and right" is not a good thing. It's a serious process to be undertaken when the alternative is worse.

Re:This will be fun

[RKThoadan]

However, Matthew 5:41 says "And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles." [ESV]. This refers to the law at the time where a Roman soldier could require someone to carry their gear for 1 mile. Odds are very good that whatever that soldier was doing it probably qualified as sin. This seems to be a pretty clear case of assisting someone in sin. To me a possible distinction is whether the "sin" would happen without your assistance. In the case of the soldier and the gay wedding it's going to happen regardless of what you think, so I think the answer there is that you should bake 2 cakes.

Legality

[PeteJanda]

/sigh/ Discrimination with a noble intent is still... discrimination. Would love to know out a ride sharing service exclusively for white bros who want a safe space for off color jokes would be received.

Re:Legality

[LynnwoodRooster]

To SJWs, off-color jokes are a microaggression - they ARE an attack.

Re:Legality

[oakgrove]

See? You just made a joke. And it wasn't half-bad even for you. Learn from this experience.

Re:Legality

[Solandri]

For those who don't/can't see it, basically these people are saying that because some men are guilty of assaulting women, they will generalize that stereotype to all men and prohibit them entirely. In one fell swoop they've legitimized stereotyping, discrimination based on stereotypes, and gender profiling.

To me, the acid test for any potentially discriminatory practice is simple algebra. Instead of a race or gender or whatever, replace it with a variable. Then apply the same formula to all other situations you can think of. This eliminates any personal biases you may have. "A taxi service for women" becomes "a taxi service for x". Substitute anything else for x. x = men. x = wealthy. x = whites. x = blacks. If any of those seems discriminatory, then the entire concept is likely discriminatory.

That is what you get when you apply the absolute binary standards of discrimination the PC crowd has advocated. If you apply (IMHO more sensible) looser standards which take into account real statistical differences (which may coincide with certain stereotypes), then services like this become allowable. If the rate of male on female assault in taxis greatly exceeds the rate of female on female assault, then there is justification for a service like this. But to get to this point, you first have to admit that men and women are different. Something the PC crowd has assiduously denied thus far. Otherwise you have no basis for generating separate statistics for men vs women in the first place.

Re:Legality

[AmiMoJo]

A better solution that doesn't involve any discrimination would be to simply vet the drivers better. Uber want to avoid doing that because it makes them look too much like a taxi company with employees, instead of just a pure ride sharing service that doesn't have to abide by the rules. The rules which were put in place to stop this sort of thing.

Re:Legality

[Firethorn]

One thing that taxi drivers don't want getting out is that for the most part:
1. Assaults by taxi drivers are fairly common as well.
2. Taxi drivers are often vetted about as well as Uber drivers - many of the companies use the same background check service Uber does.

Now, I can't make universal statements because there's thousands of taxi companies, but I think Uber is getting a bad rap from sheer size and being a good target for news articles.

Re:Legality

[russotto]

What's next, female only shopping malls because the sexist pigs might look at a glorious woman with lust?

Now there's an idea.. "Honey, can you come shopping with me?"... "Sorry, the mall just went woman only, remember? Why don't you go with Helen instead?"

Re:Legality

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I'm Johnny Cab!

So....

[ericdano]

So instead of regulating Uber and other "ride sharing" services......they just create another thing with potentially the same problems.

Why not just cut the BS and just regulate Uber like we do Taxi companies.......like what should have happened a long time ago.

Nice solution there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scores of women have reported assaults by Uber drivers

Good thing that a woman could never assault another woman.

As if...

[x0ra]

women on women rape/sexual assault didn't exist...

Re:Totally illegal

[magarity]

You're kidding, right? There are plenty of women only businesses. Isn't there even a chain of gyms called Curves? That's women only, but I don't think too many women get molested at gyms.

This is really a bold business move

[thecombatwombat]

This is not the first company to try this, what they don't say at least up front, is how tricky this business would be.

According to one in NY, She Taxis only 2% of drivers right now are women.

Will a lot more women flock to this job if they feel it's safer? It seems from a business point of view, these people are really banking on that being true. All law aside, it's an interesting experiment. I mean this dynamic comes up all the time in most conversations about gender disparity. "If we just got rid of all the harassment, there'd be far more women coders" is something I've heard plenty of times before. This is the closest thing to a controlled experiment we're ever going to see.

Safety Issues?

[KermodeBear]

"We want to show there's inequality in safety in our industry,

Want to fix your safety inequality because males tend to be stronger and more aggressive? Start carrying a pistol. Will it solve all problems? No, but being armed can prevent a bad situation from escalating to a Very Bad situation.

"Ridesharing" or taxi?

[pereric]

Both Uber and this service seems to provide a service where you order someone to drive you somewhere, without that person actually having any errand of their own to that place. To me that's not "ridesharing", it's taxi. "Ridesharing" to me is when you intend to drive somewhere, and check if someone else wish to ride along. And share expenses like fuel and perhaps vehicle depreciation, but nothing more.

Just having drivers being independent contractors instead of employed doesn't make a big difference end-user-wise to me (well except a lack of quality control, as shown by Uber) - it's still functionally a taxi service. This service (with good intentions) seems to make it even more like regular taxi operations by also emphasizing background checks and such.

Have I misunderstood "ridesharing", or are the "ridesharing" companies just trying to change the word to use for their "sure-not-a-taxi" taxi service?

Re: Totally illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no issue with women only gyms. My issue is with women who would deny me the peace and lack of drama in a male only gym, while still defending the need for female only gyms.

Can we see the stats?

[JustNiz]

Without any actual stats to back them up, I'm far more inclined to believe that this is just more feminazi man-hating bullshit than the result of a real epidemic of rapist Uber drivers.

Re: Apparently JC laws were against Business Inter

[countach74]

While I agree with you that businesses are there to make money, and are generally willing to forego personal prejudices in order to undercut the competition, there is a flaw in your argument. It can be financial suicide to go against what the surrounding culture wants. For example, if a region is racist, it may be a competitive advantage in the short term to go against the grain by expanding your hiring pool or clientele base by hiring and serving the minority group. However, this is likely to upset the majority, as they generally dislike the minority. A boycott or two later and you're bankrupt. Now all of that said, I tend to agree with what I think your overall point is, which is that private enterprise generally does a better job of being inclusive of different people groups than governments.

Re:New Geek Ride Service

[thegarbz]

What a stupid idea. You're just going to alienate potential customers who will feel threatened by their drivers.

I will start a ride sharing service where the drivers have advanced knowledge in emacs alone, and potential customers need to show they aren't vi users before they get on.