That only solves the problem if there is an equal demand for both. Assuming there isn’t, the male drivers still have a claim for lost income as a result of their gender.
It solves Uber’s problem, in that Uber set up a feature to favor one sex.
Men drivers can’t blame the public if there isn’t as much demand for their services.
That doesn’t make any sense. Can male strippers sue that there’s not as big demand for them as there is for female strippers? I don’t think so. (This is just a metaphor, I have no idea how big the male stripper business is, but that’s not the point, I’m sure you could come up with a similar example where gender is an advantage, becasue there’s simply smaller demand for the other gender).
Ok, lets say I prefer only male customer service representatives, front desk receptionists, only male grocery store check out clerks, only male baristas, hairstylists, tattoo artists, auto mechanics, chefs/cooks, restaurant servers, daycare providers, dog walkers, whatever.
Now, I only use businesses where my ‘consumer preference’ is ‘respected’, and there are so many others who have similarly strong preferences to me, that businesses begin to either gender bias their hiring, or offer specific locations that are gender locked, or offer me some kind of filter for non location based / scheduled / on demand enterprises.
Am I being sexist, or am I expressing my consumer preferences?
Are the businesses being sexist, or are they aligning business practices with consumer expectations?
What if femboys, queer men, trans men, well, they’re not men to me, I don’t want to see any of them, so I stop using businesses who hire them, or at least allow me some option to avoid them?
What if I also only want to interact with white, christian men?
Who are 25 to 45 years old?
… How do you draw the lines between ‘businesses reflecting consumer demand’ and ‘the inherent structure of society is bigoted and segregated’?
Why do you draw those lines, which lines do you draw or not draw?
None of those scenarios puts the customer at greater risk of being a victim of a violent or sexual crime, none of them put the employee in question alone with the customer in an unmonitored vehicle, easy line to draw
Tattoo artists do not generally have their customers alone in an unmonitored vehicle with the ability to relocate them easily against their will, neither do masseuses or any of your other examples. Weak comparisons, weak argument.
Either literally all or nearly all Uber/Lyft cars have cameras in them, for driver safety, for recording potential accidents, for being able to go the tape when some kind of customer dispute happens.
And I mean yeah, a tattoo artist of masseuse doesn’t have their work area in a car, but, you are in a constrained setting, you’re already on a bed/table, likely some degree of half naked… wouldn’t really be that hard to take someone from that level of restrained to more restrained and/or sedated, then just actually throw them in a car, or a basement, whatever.
It is already no problem for you to choose a male tattoo artist, a male hairstylist and a male dogwalker. Whereever you choose a single employee to work closely with you and where you are in a somewhat vulnerable position you can already choose. If for some reason you feel more at ease with male doctors, tattoo artists or hairstylists or massagist, noone is stopping you from only booking with a man.
Whereever you can be in a vulnerable position with an employee it makes sense that you can choose who that person is.
Ok so you also seem to be describing ‘being in a vulnerable position’ as a, or the ‘line’.
Can you define that explicitly, you know, as if it were part of a law?
I will note that tons of people have anxiety/trauma complexes that trigger in public, or in private, with people.of specific sexes, genders, races, expressed religions, etc… so… are all of those things fair game for things that can cause people to feel ‘in a vulnerable position’?
Some people don’t really even have any specific personal trauma, but are just bigotted and some way, and would tell you that… certain people with certain attributes in certain situations make them feel ‘vulnerable’.
I would say basically if the person is working on/with your body or if they have some form of physical power over you which is the case if you are getting in their car (and they could in theory lock you in/drive you somewhere else).
It is e.g. totally fine if a black person would prefer another black person as a hair stylist because they feel they know more about black hair. Same goes for a white person prefering a white hair stylist.
At a certain point you should probably ask yourself if you can still participate in society if your demands get too detailed. I would draw the line where the interaction is very unpersonal and takes place in a public setting. Everybody can have a one-minute exchange with any chashier. But as soon as the employee is going to work on your body or put you in a position where you can’t easily leave it’s fair to choose who works with you.
I know a lot of people who have a gender preference when it comes to doctors. Not just gynecologists, but any. I know people who’d only go to a male or female massage therapist. I know asians who’d only go to an asian hairdresser. These are all choices people make every day, we just don’t notice because we don’t filter it through an app.
As for bigotted people, I don’t think you’ll change their mind by forcing them to interact with you. If I was e.g. a hindu driver I might even feel safer knowing that people who hate my religion can choose not to be in my car. The safety concern goes both ways.
We’re not discussing preference as in attraction, we’re discussing the preference of women customers for women drivers due to the significantly greater incidence of violence and sexual assault commited by men specifically towards women, which is also not a choice
Sounds like Uber and Lyft should stop hiring drivers who sexually harass customers.
When I said “bone fide” I meant that attraction isn’t a choice. In the case of an Uber driver gender preference is a choice.
Based on your “customer preference” logic could I also say my preference is race based because I found a similar statistic? Would that justify Uber allowing race selection?
We have laws that protect people from discrimination on protected grounds (race, gender, sexual orientation, age etc…) not because there are no legitimate statistical reasons for people to have a preference, but because the damage to society caused by discrimination based on characteristics you can’t change about yourself far exceeds these benefits.
Sounds like Uber and Lyft should stop hiring drivers who sexually harass customers.
Hey I completely agree with that!
Maybe instead of punishing their entire male driver base, 99.9% of whom have not sexually assaulted a passenger, they could adopt some screening standards, have some regular, mandatory instructional courses with scored tests at the end, do some background checks!
Preferring not to be assaulted is not a choice, the reality that men are more likely to commit these crimes is also not a choice, and the fact that the specific scenario of driver and lone passenger is much higher risk is also extremely relevant. It would be nice if Uber cared enough to try screening their employees more carefully, but offloading cost and responsibility onto someone else is more profitable so I wouldn’t count on it happening any time soon. You could possibly find a statistic to support being a bigot, but it would definitely be bullshit. International crime statistics and legal & sociological analysis directly contradicts racially biased US crime stats, whereas they instead fully confirm this specific gender bias in crime stats. One is true, the others are not. Allowing women to make choices that affect their safety based on verifiable facts is entirely reasonable, I don’t particularly care if men find it discriminatory.
Can you explain that to me, how either collectively, or personally, male drivers are somehow all responsible for their services being valued less, less in demand?
Walk me through it.
I’m a guy, never done uber or lyft before, lets say I’m gonna start tomorrow.
Why and or how is it my fault that I’d be less in-demand as a driver than a woman driver?
Nearly all of the significant number of sexual assaults by Uber drivers have been committed by men. So we, as men, if we become Uber drivers, are statistically significantly more likely to commit sexual assault because we are men.
It’s not personally your fault, but it is the fault of the cohort you’d join, male drivers, who have created the statistical anomaly by doing all those sexual assaults.
All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever."[3]
Relevant case:
The California Supreme Court also decided that the act outlaws sex-based prices at bars (ladies’ nights): offering women a discount on drinks, but not offering the same discount to males. In Koire v Metro Car Wash (1985) 40 Cal 3d 24, 219 Cal Rptr 133, the court held that such discounts constituted sex stereotyping prohibited by this Act.[8]
Uber and Lyft drivers are independent contractors, ie, they are procuring services from Uber and Lyft, the businesses.
In July 2024, in the case of Castellanos v. State of California, the California Supreme Court issued a ruling which upheld a voter-approved law that allows app-based transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as independent contractors, and not as employees.
Thus, they, men, are a protected class when acting as independent contractors, and being treated in one way or another by the business they are contracting with.
So, that means, that this is far from a frivolous class action.
Nonetheless, if you are subjected to blatant discrimination as an independent contractor, you may have protection under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act which mandates that “[a]ll persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, or immigration status are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.” The Unruh Civil Rights Act has been used to obtain protection for independent contractors experiencing discrimination in business relationships, but it does not apply to employment relationships.
If you gave the explanation that you just gave me, to a court, in CA… you would lose, and the men bringing the case would win, because you have just plainly admitted you (figuratively, as Uber/Lyft) are doing discrimination.
The alternative sets a precedent that independent contractors cannot be protected from sex based discrimination.
Which uh, would be very problematic, for say uh, strip clubs and modelling, which tend to also actually largely to entirely also be contractor configurations, not full employee configurations.
Or, Uber and Lyft, in CA at least, have to treat everyone who drives for Uber and Lyft, in CA, as actual employees… which would grant them various benefits, but would also allow for the ‘female driver only’ option to still exist in CA.
Theres… no other, more statistically significant profile to sexually assaulting drivers than just ‘they are men’?
There’s no training regimen or qualifying standards, no background check… ?
I think you’re missing the simple fact that it’s the passenger who’s choosing. I get to pick my doctor based on sex, my therapist, my massage therapist.
No, you’re missing the entire concept of Civil Rights and Anti Workplace Discrimination laws.
Just replace sex with race, or height, or disability status, or sexual orientation, and you can see how you are making a fool of yourself.
People have to do these jobs. If you just say a class of people can be prevented from doing these jobs, then you don’t believe in employee/worker rights.
And again, no its not just the passenger who is picking.
Its the business that is allowing their contractors to be discriminated against, when it comes to the awarding of micro-contracts, based on their sex alone.
Businesses, and the government, are not allowed to unfairly discriminate based on things that are irrelevant to the contract itself, in how they award contract work. That’s already illegal, in many other contexts.
Its a worker rights issue, not a consumer choice issue.
Uber or Lyft could actually do effective things to weed out bad drivers… effectively cutting half of their drivers payout down by roughly a third… is not a sensible way to do that.
And yes, a man or a woman being your driver is irrelevant. 99.99% of male drivers do not assault their passengers. The chance that a female driver is going to be safer than a male driver is statistically indistinguishable from 0.
Why is it acceptable and legal for me to choose my doctor, therapist, many folks doing a service for me whether as employees or not then?
If I pay for only-fans content, I choose who’s. Why not let people choose their drivers? Why is this e different from the other examples like doctor or adult content?
Doctors and therapists tend not to be contractors, they tend to be employees.
Totally different legal situation.
Which you appear to have glossed over, or just don’t care about.
Businesses tend to only function at all within a legal framework, so its kind of important.
Anyway, OnlyFans is not Uber.
Uber would be like that if you could actually examine people’s individual profiles, like Tinder, or maybe like AngiesList, an app where local freelance contractors post their whole work related profile for you to try to pick the best person for the job.
But Uber doesn’t do that.
Because there’s no reason for it to.
Unlike with OnlyFans… UberDriver’s looks don’t matter. Unlike with AngiesList… UberDriver’s work history and experience with HVAC or plumbing or whatever doesn’t matter.
All that matters is that they have a car, a liscense, and they can drive you to your destination, and their previous passengers rated them well, or at least did not rate them poorly, if they’re fairly new.
(Anytime an UberDriver pulls some dumbass shit with a passenger? Gets in a car accident, their fault or not? Loses their liscense? Basically instantly shitcanned and banned for life from working with Uber.)
(Oh and they all have cameras, because all potential incidents must be reviewable, both for the safety of the passenger, and the driver. You apparently have no idea how common it is for uber passengers to assault their drivers, try to rob them, do ridiculous/dangerous shit in the car, refuse to leave the vehicle at ride termination, get bait called into a grand theft auto carjacking, etc. Its way, waaaay more common than unprovoked violence from drivers toward passengers)
Uber has an algo that assigns the nearest available driver who meets your passenger and distance requirements and it does this by sending out micro contracts out to their nearby active driver pool, and somebody accepts it first.
You as a consumer of an Uber drive… don’t have any say at all in who your driver is going to be, you know nothing about them, not when you request the ride.
All this new thing does is not send out those requests to men.
That’s not you picking out your favorite specific contractor based on careful consideration, that’s you just blanket ignoring half the driver pool because of the genes they were born with.
(And I guesss, with current state of the US, well fuck trans people I guess, who knows what their legal sex or sex in Uber is, at this point)
Do you wanna turn Uber into Tinder, for drives?
Swipe through available driver profiles, get a sense of who they are first?
Here’s what’ll happen:
The vast majority of men will rarely get any matches when a woman has to match first.
So, that means women drivers have no problem getting male or female passengers, men drivers have no problem getting male passengers, but only a small amount of male drivers will get female passengers.
So… now half the rider population is unaccessible to half the driver population.
Beyond that, pretty people with nicer cars, or… whatever kind of more attractive profile, they will get all the requests, become parasocial micro celebs, and they’ll be too busy to meet all demand, so, you’ll either be picky, matching with a few busy people, and your rides will not be timely, or, you’ll scattershot, and basically always be demeaning to or disappointed by your non 10/10 drivers, even though they’re timely and do their job well.
You seriously want to dating app-ify a taxi app?
Its like the literal perfect opposite of how to efficiently solve the logistical problem of ‘get passenger from A to B in shortest amount of time’.
Its essentially the most perfectly inefficient system conceivable, for rapidly solving dynamic route planning with a random number and location of drivers, passengers, pickups, destinations.
Next, what happens is male drivers will leave Uber/Lyft, and start a male drivers only app, purely out of spite, because now, they have basically a quarter to a half of their potential contracts as they did before.
Its not like its that technically difficult to make the actual software that is the Uber/Lyft app.
They’ll just have to start it in one particularly dense urban area with enough likeminded guys, and it would grow from there, hell maybe do the digital equivalent of a franchise model and just have other cities/regions handled by local maintainers, a layered and variable system of pricing and cost sharing and specifically handling local physical conditions, legal environments. Hell it could even form local unions/chapters.
So… with everything you’ve said so far, you should be 100% fine with a male only drivers app.
The… reason why this doesn’t already exist, is because if you said you were going to make a men only drivers app, most people would say that that’s a clearly illegal business model that discriminates against women on the basis of only their sex.
I guess we will see if CA somehow decides that effective, but not strictly formal sexual discrimination against contract workers, in only one direction, is legal.
That only solves the problem if there is an equal demand for both. Assuming there isn’t, the male drivers still have a claim for lost income as a result of their gender.
It solves Uber’s problem, in that Uber set up a feature to favor one sex.
Men drivers can’t blame the public if there isn’t as much demand for their services.
That doesn’t make any sense. Can male strippers sue that there’s not as big demand for them as there is for female strippers? I don’t think so. (This is just a metaphor, I have no idea how big the male stripper business is, but that’s not the point, I’m sure you could come up with a similar example where gender is an advantage, becasue there’s simply smaller demand for the other gender).
Gender is a bone fide job requirement for strippers. That’s not the case for taxi drivers.
The gender “requirement” for strippers is based on customer preference, if Uber customers prefer a gender for drivers then the same is true here
Ok, lets say I prefer only male customer service representatives, front desk receptionists, only male grocery store check out clerks, only male baristas, hairstylists, tattoo artists, auto mechanics, chefs/cooks, restaurant servers, daycare providers, dog walkers, whatever.
Now, I only use businesses where my ‘consumer preference’ is ‘respected’, and there are so many others who have similarly strong preferences to me, that businesses begin to either gender bias their hiring, or offer specific locations that are gender locked, or offer me some kind of filter for non location based / scheduled / on demand enterprises.
Am I being sexist, or am I expressing my consumer preferences?
Are the businesses being sexist, or are they aligning business practices with consumer expectations?
What if femboys, queer men, trans men, well, they’re not men to me, I don’t want to see any of them, so I stop using businesses who hire them, or at least allow me some option to avoid them?
What if I also only want to interact with white, christian men?
Who are 25 to 45 years old?
… How do you draw the lines between ‘businesses reflecting consumer demand’ and ‘the inherent structure of society is bigoted and segregated’?
Why do you draw those lines, which lines do you draw or not draw?
None of those scenarios puts the customer at greater risk of being a victim of a violent or sexual crime, none of them put the employee in question alone with the customer in an unmonitored vehicle, easy line to draw
… A tattoo artist or masseuse could not more easily sexually assault me than a grocery store clerk or dog walker?
What about a therapist vs an accountant, doing in office consults with either?
How about a bus driver or a pilot crew, flight attendants?
I am assuming the line you are trying to draw is something like … being in a confined space, and having less control over your ability to egress.
But you didn’t actually draw that line, so that’s just a guess on my part.
You just made a dubious claim and then used that to justify an undefined rule.
If you’d like to actually try to draw a line, that would be nice.
Tattoo artists do not generally have their customers alone in an unmonitored vehicle with the ability to relocate them easily against their will, neither do masseuses or any of your other examples. Weak comparisons, weak argument.
Unmonitored vehicle?
Either literally all or nearly all Uber/Lyft cars have cameras in them, for driver safety, for recording potential accidents, for being able to go the tape when some kind of customer dispute happens.
And I mean yeah, a tattoo artist of masseuse doesn’t have their work area in a car, but, you are in a constrained setting, you’re already on a bed/table, likely some degree of half naked… wouldn’t really be that hard to take someone from that level of restrained to more restrained and/or sedated, then just actually throw them in a car, or a basement, whatever.
It is already no problem for you to choose a male tattoo artist, a male hairstylist and a male dogwalker. Whereever you choose a single employee to work closely with you and where you are in a somewhat vulnerable position you can already choose. If for some reason you feel more at ease with male doctors, tattoo artists or hairstylists or massagist, noone is stopping you from only booking with a man.
Whereever you can be in a vulnerable position with an employee it makes sense that you can choose who that person is.
Ok so you also seem to be describing ‘being in a vulnerable position’ as a, or the ‘line’.
Can you define that explicitly, you know, as if it were part of a law?
I will note that tons of people have anxiety/trauma complexes that trigger in public, or in private, with people.of specific sexes, genders, races, expressed religions, etc… so… are all of those things fair game for things that can cause people to feel ‘in a vulnerable position’?
Some people don’t really even have any specific personal trauma, but are just bigotted and some way, and would tell you that… certain people with certain attributes in certain situations make them feel ‘vulnerable’.
I would say basically if the person is working on/with your body or if they have some form of physical power over you which is the case if you are getting in their car (and they could in theory lock you in/drive you somewhere else).
It is e.g. totally fine if a black person would prefer another black person as a hair stylist because they feel they know more about black hair. Same goes for a white person prefering a white hair stylist. At a certain point you should probably ask yourself if you can still participate in society if your demands get too detailed. I would draw the line where the interaction is very unpersonal and takes place in a public setting. Everybody can have a one-minute exchange with any chashier. But as soon as the employee is going to work on your body or put you in a position where you can’t easily leave it’s fair to choose who works with you.
I know a lot of people who have a gender preference when it comes to doctors. Not just gynecologists, but any. I know people who’d only go to a male or female massage therapist. I know asians who’d only go to an asian hairdresser. These are all choices people make every day, we just don’t notice because we don’t filter it through an app.
As for bigotted people, I don’t think you’ll change their mind by forcing them to interact with you. If I was e.g. a hindu driver I might even feel safer knowing that people who hate my religion can choose not to be in my car. The safety concern goes both ways.
The gender you’re attracted to isn’t a choice or a “preference”.
We’re not discussing preference as in attraction, we’re discussing the preference of women customers for women drivers due to the significantly greater incidence of violence and sexual assault commited by men specifically towards women, which is also not a choice
Sounds like Uber and Lyft should stop hiring drivers who sexually harass customers.
When I said “bone fide” I meant that attraction isn’t a choice. In the case of an Uber driver gender preference is a choice.
Based on your “customer preference” logic could I also say my preference is race based because I found a similar statistic? Would that justify Uber allowing race selection?
We have laws that protect people from discrimination on protected grounds (race, gender, sexual orientation, age etc…) not because there are no legitimate statistical reasons for people to have a preference, but because the damage to society caused by discrimination based on characteristics you can’t change about yourself far exceeds these benefits.
You keep saying “bone fide” in relation to strippers when you mean “
bonafide” bonerfied.Hey I completely agree with that!
Maybe instead of punishing their entire male driver base, 99.9% of whom have not sexually assaulted a passenger, they could adopt some screening standards, have some regular, mandatory instructional courses with scored tests at the end, do some background checks!
Preferring not to be assaulted is not a choice, the reality that men are more likely to commit these crimes is also not a choice, and the fact that the specific scenario of driver and lone passenger is much higher risk is also extremely relevant. It would be nice if Uber cared enough to try screening their employees more carefully, but offloading cost and responsibility onto someone else is more profitable so I wouldn’t count on it happening any time soon. You could possibly find a statistic to support being a bigot, but it would definitely be bullshit. International crime statistics and legal & sociological analysis directly contradicts racially biased US crime stats, whereas they instead fully confirm this specific gender bias in crime stats. One is true, the others are not. Allowing women to make choices that affect their safety based on verifiable facts is entirely reasonable, I don’t particularly care if men find it discriminatory.
Enjoy being a rape culture supporter I guess
Nope, because it’s the male drivers fault the demand is different.
Can you explain that to me, how either collectively, or personally, male drivers are somehow all responsible for their services being valued less, less in demand?
Walk me through it.
I’m a guy, never done uber or lyft before, lets say I’m gonna start tomorrow.
Why and or how is it my fault that I’d be less in-demand as a driver than a woman driver?
Nearly all of the significant number of sexual assaults by Uber drivers have been committed by men. So we, as men, if we become Uber drivers, are statistically significantly more likely to commit sexual assault because we are men.
It’s not personally your fault, but it is the fault of the cohort you’d join, male drivers, who have created the statistical anomaly by doing all those sexual assaults.
So, the actions of a subset are being used to justify discrimination against an entire group, from a business.
It’s not personally my fault, but I am (hypothetically) personally punished.
Uh ok, sounds like a winning discrimination lawsuit to me, if you just admit all that right off the top!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act
The text of the relevant law:
Relevant case:
Uber and Lyft drivers are independent contractors, ie, they are procuring services from Uber and Lyft, the businesses.
They are not employees.
https://chauvellaw.com/post/ca-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-uber-and-lyft-in-ab5-case/
Thus, they, men, are a protected class when acting as independent contractors, and being treated in one way or another by the business they are contracting with.
So, that means, that this is far from a frivolous class action.
https://www.vjamesdesimonelaw.com/dealing-with-discrimination-as-an-independent-contractor/
If you gave the explanation that you just gave me, to a court, in CA… you would lose, and the men bringing the case would win, because you have just plainly admitted you (figuratively, as Uber/Lyft) are doing discrimination.
The alternative sets a precedent that independent contractors cannot be protected from sex based discrimination.
Which uh, would be very problematic, for say uh, strip clubs and modelling, which tend to also actually largely to entirely also be contractor configurations, not full employee configurations.
Or, Uber and Lyft, in CA at least, have to treat everyone who drives for Uber and Lyft, in CA, as actual employees… which would grant them various benefits, but would also allow for the ‘female driver only’ option to still exist in CA.
Theres… no other, more statistically significant profile to sexually assaulting drivers than just ‘they are men’?
There’s no training regimen or qualifying standards, no background check… ?
There’s… no way other to ensure rider safety?
I think you’re missing the simple fact that it’s the passenger who’s choosing. I get to pick my doctor based on sex, my therapist, my massage therapist.
No, you’re missing the entire concept of Civil Rights and Anti Workplace Discrimination laws.
Just replace sex with race, or height, or disability status, or sexual orientation, and you can see how you are making a fool of yourself.
People have to do these jobs. If you just say a class of people can be prevented from doing these jobs, then you don’t believe in employee/worker rights.
And again, no its not just the passenger who is picking.
Its the business that is allowing their contractors to be discriminated against, when it comes to the awarding of micro-contracts, based on their sex alone.
Businesses, and the government, are not allowed to unfairly discriminate based on things that are irrelevant to the contract itself, in how they award contract work. That’s already illegal, in many other contexts.
Its a worker rights issue, not a consumer choice issue.
Uber or Lyft could actually do effective things to weed out bad drivers… effectively cutting half of their drivers payout down by roughly a third… is not a sensible way to do that.
And yes, a man or a woman being your driver is irrelevant. 99.99% of male drivers do not assault their passengers. The chance that a female driver is going to be safer than a male driver is statistically indistinguishable from 0.
Why is it acceptable and legal for me to choose my doctor, therapist, many folks doing a service for me whether as employees or not then?
If I pay for only-fans content, I choose who’s. Why not let people choose their drivers? Why is this e different from the other examples like doctor or adult content?
Doctors and therapists tend not to be contractors, they tend to be employees.
Totally different legal situation.
Which you appear to have glossed over, or just don’t care about.
Businesses tend to only function at all within a legal framework, so its kind of important.
Anyway, OnlyFans is not Uber.
Uber would be like that if you could actually examine people’s individual profiles, like Tinder, or maybe like AngiesList, an app where local freelance contractors post their whole work related profile for you to try to pick the best person for the job.
But Uber doesn’t do that.
Because there’s no reason for it to.
Unlike with OnlyFans… UberDriver’s looks don’t matter. Unlike with AngiesList… UberDriver’s work history and experience with HVAC or plumbing or whatever doesn’t matter.
All that matters is that they have a car, a liscense, and they can drive you to your destination, and their previous passengers rated them well, or at least did not rate them poorly, if they’re fairly new.
(Anytime an UberDriver pulls some dumbass shit with a passenger? Gets in a car accident, their fault or not? Loses their liscense? Basically instantly shitcanned and banned for life from working with Uber.)
(Oh and they all have cameras, because all potential incidents must be reviewable, both for the safety of the passenger, and the driver. You apparently have no idea how common it is for uber passengers to assault their drivers, try to rob them, do ridiculous/dangerous shit in the car, refuse to leave the vehicle at ride termination, get bait called into a grand theft auto carjacking, etc. Its way, waaaay more common than unprovoked violence from drivers toward passengers)
Uber has an algo that assigns the nearest available driver who meets your passenger and distance requirements and it does this by sending out micro contracts out to their nearby active driver pool, and somebody accepts it first.
You as a consumer of an Uber drive… don’t have any say at all in who your driver is going to be, you know nothing about them, not when you request the ride.
All this new thing does is not send out those requests to men.
That’s not you picking out your favorite specific contractor based on careful consideration, that’s you just blanket ignoring half the driver pool because of the genes they were born with.
(And I guesss, with current state of the US, well fuck trans people I guess, who knows what their legal sex or sex in Uber is, at this point)
Do you wanna turn Uber into Tinder, for drives?
Swipe through available driver profiles, get a sense of who they are first?
Here’s what’ll happen:
The vast majority of men will rarely get any matches when a woman has to match first.
So, that means women drivers have no problem getting male or female passengers, men drivers have no problem getting male passengers, but only a small amount of male drivers will get female passengers.
So… now half the rider population is unaccessible to half the driver population.
Beyond that, pretty people with nicer cars, or… whatever kind of more attractive profile, they will get all the requests, become parasocial micro celebs, and they’ll be too busy to meet all demand, so, you’ll either be picky, matching with a few busy people, and your rides will not be timely, or, you’ll scattershot, and basically always be demeaning to or disappointed by your non 10/10 drivers, even though they’re timely and do their job well.
You seriously want to dating app-ify a taxi app?
Its like the literal perfect opposite of how to efficiently solve the logistical problem of ‘get passenger from A to B in shortest amount of time’.
Its essentially the most perfectly inefficient system conceivable, for rapidly solving dynamic route planning with a random number and location of drivers, passengers, pickups, destinations.
Next, what happens is male drivers will leave Uber/Lyft, and start a male drivers only app, purely out of spite, because now, they have basically a quarter to a half of their potential contracts as they did before.
Its not like its that technically difficult to make the actual software that is the Uber/Lyft app.
They’ll just have to start it in one particularly dense urban area with enough likeminded guys, and it would grow from there, hell maybe do the digital equivalent of a franchise model and just have other cities/regions handled by local maintainers, a layered and variable system of pricing and cost sharing and specifically handling local physical conditions, legal environments. Hell it could even form local unions/chapters.
So… with everything you’ve said so far, you should be 100% fine with a male only drivers app.
The… reason why this doesn’t already exist, is because if you said you were going to make a men only drivers app, most people would say that that’s a clearly illegal business model that discriminates against women on the basis of only their sex.
I guess we will see if CA somehow decides that effective, but not strictly formal sexual discrimination against contract workers, in only one direction, is legal.