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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

While I can kinda buy the argument for why men may want to do this, it is also complicated and how far do we go. (saying this as a guy for the record)

Is it that you are either free for all or you can limit to your own sex or a sex of your choice? So could men say they only want woman? What about trans people.

Do we start adding in religion, political affiliation, race, etc etc etc.

Woman not feeling safe with unknown (and largely unvetted) Male drivers (or passengers) is a valid concern. It feels more like a bandaid than an actual fix, but it is an "Easy" solution to a problem. The ideal should be that we don't need this, not that we add in more filters like this. But for many reasons we as a society are not there.

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I wonder if it's even legal to deny something basic as transportation based on genetic traits

Fact of the matter is, this is institutionalized discrimination. It might be beneficial, but it's discrimination.

From a purely logical standpoint, if this type of discrimination is tolerated, others should likely also be tolerated.

If other types of discrimination are not tolerated, then this type of discrimination should not be tolerated either.

It's no different than white people not wanting black drivers, and Uber supporting that.

I think there is a very big difference between those when personal safety is considered.

It is the same as asking if you have a preference when you get a massage or go to the doctor since those are more intimate and likely involving a lack of clothes. Something that in those situations you would feel regardless of your gender. As a male I prefer a male doctor, especially when talking about certain topics. I realize logically this is stupid and they are a professional at the end of the day, but that is my reality.

Unlike those however, there is not really a valid reason for a man to say they don't want a female driver/passenger from a comfort or safety standpoint.

We can argue all day long about in an ideal world we would not need this, but that is not our reality.

> Unlike those however, there is not really a valid reason for a man to say they don't want a female driver/passenger from a comfort or safety standpoint.

There is no more valid reason for a woman to say she doesn't want a male driver than a white person to say they don't want a black driver.

Men, as a group, are not dangerous, and there is no reason to discriminate against them. The vast majority of human beings, men included, are nonviolent.

> It's no different than white people not wanting black drivers, and Uber supporting that.

This is a false analogy. Men tend to be 40% to 60% stronger than women and testosterone is well linked with aggressiveness.

A better comparison might be people not wanting civilized chimpanzees for drivers.

If my daughter or wife wants a female driver I am 100% ok with that.

> This is a false analogy. Men tend to be 40% to 60% stronger than women and testosterone is well linked with aggressiveness.

I think you may not have seen many other statistics if you think this disproves the point.

Which statistics? Are you talking about statistics linking poverty to crime? Or lead ingestion leading to aggressiveness? Or are you just being subtly racist?

Throwing out that word as a weapon doesn’t work anymore, let’s stay on the logical chain of the conversation.

Having a proposed explanation for statistical correlations doesn’t change the amount of danger a driver or passenger is in.

So why would one set of statistics be used to allow discrimination but another not?

And citing such statistics is different from citing crime statistics broken down by race how?

Crime statistics are heavily influenced by poverty and environmental conditions. The average man, however, is always stronger than the average woman.

I invite you to ask 5 female friends how safe they feel meeting a random male and asking for help where they will be forced to share a confined space.

crime statistics is a social construct

biological male/female strength difference is factual reality.

> Woman not feeling safe with unknown (and largely unvetted) Male drivers (or passengers) is a valid concern. It feels more like a bandaid than an actual fix, but it is an "Easy" solution to a problem. The ideal should be that we don't need this, not that we add in more filters like this. But for many reasons we as a society are not there.

Instead of building trust and ensuring that all Uber drivers are trustworthy drivers - they add option to avoid "potentially" less trustworthy drivers. Latter option is cheaper.

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