If this form of discrimination is ok, can we get other filters?
What if somebody started a Whites-only gym because it made them feel safer?
Maybe some claim it's for safety but the fact they're often 24hr would decry that.
Hints: membership clubs, religious organizations (Gainz Я God)
For anyone reading who has not previously considered it, please imagine what it feels like to be in a moving, locked vehicle you're not in control of, in an unfamiliar place, with someone who is much stronger and taller than you who's not respecting your verbal boundaries. What guarantee do you have it will stop there? What could happen if I truly upset him? How much more unpleasant could it become for me? Meanwhile, I'm paying for this. Even with the option, I'm still paying with the extra time I willingly choose to wait.
Uber is a public accommodation. It cannot discriminate based on sex. If someone wanted to start a private club where women joined to drive and be driven in a not-for-profit way, that would also be legal.
Even if you go "fair" and have the same number of drains regardless of size you often end up with lines for the women.
Most large place compensate by putting in way too many toilets on average or just hope there isn't a crush-time.
The best place to see this in action is at a stadium with 50/50 fans during half-time or other break.
I'm rather curious where this is actually the case, particularly as you claim it's not uncommon.
My experience has been the opposite, though I'd hardly claim it to be representative. My prior employer had all single-occupant, unisex bathrooms originally, until one woman high up the management chain demanded there be women's only bathrooms. So, a women's only placard was placed on a couple of the unisex bathrooms, and suddenly, guys had to semi-frequently wait on for the remaining available unisex bathrooms during the day.
It was very clearly discriminatory, and I have no problem claiming the reverse would be just as bad.
The larger accessibility room is also for parents with small children.
Deep breath in... There are two types of discrimination. Paraphrasing Thomas Sowell, let's call them Type I and Type II.
Type II discrimination is the evil awful kind we rightfully rail against. It is "treating people negatively, based on arbitrary aversions or animosities to individuals of a particular race or sex..."
Type I discrimination is of the broader sort; "an ability to discern differences in the qualities of people and things, choosing accordingly." We run our lives with this kind of discrimination: is this food safe to eat? is this activity safe to participate in? do I trust this person given what I know about them?
>> Ideally, Discrimination I, applied to people, would mean judging each person as an individual, regardless of what group that person is part of. But here, as in other contexts, the ideal is seldom found among human beings in the real world, even among people who espouse that ideal. If you are walking at night down a lonely street, and see up ahead a shadowy figure in an alley, do you judge that person as an individual or do you cross the street and pass on the other side? The shadowy figure in the alley could turn out to be a kindly neighbor, out walking his dog. But, when making such decisions, a mistake on your part could be costly, up to and including costing you your life. [1]
This kind of discrimination is what we're talking about. I'd venture that not only is it OK, it is necessary. In this case, men that have had no background check, and whose form of employment is as an Uber driver are more likely to harass women (or do worse) than a female driver. Allowing women to make a selection based on this likelihood means that female customers that are alone can make choices to still use the service while reducing the overall risk.
Mitigation of this risk in normal taxi services take the form of background checks, bonds, and a chain of responsibility running from employer to employee to customer. It places more risk on the employer deliberately. Uber deliberately chooses to avoid this risk and responsibility. That choice is baked into their business model. That means enabling this kind of discrimination from their customers is a required feature of the service.
[1] Discrimination and Disparities, by Thomas Sowell
I'm failing to see how anything you say could be used as a guideline to pick between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination. The major distinction you draw between "Type II" and "Type I" is the fact that one is fueled by "arbitrary aversion" which is not a particularly useful distinction.
What if I denied entry to black people from my bar because ""they commit more crimes"" and ""are more likely to break stuff"", is it morally ok? Why not? My opinion is that no, it's not ok because the majority of people punished were never going to behave in an uncivil way.
The same logic can be easily applied to this situation. Are men more likely to behave sexually inappropriately (which ranges from verbal harassment to assault)? Sure. Is it the majority? Hell no, it's nowhere close.
(Of course it's worth nothing that the "majority" does not necessarily have 50.01%, it's just an arbitrary line you can draw as long as you are consistent about it)
In the case of a woman coming into contact with some driver and volunteering location information like her home address, she has little to no information to make that judgement. Providing her just that bit of information, and allowing her to discriminate based on it, makes her safer. Ideally, she'd have way more information than just whether the driver is male or female. The reputation information helps, but isn't always reliable.
So the difference between "good" discrimination and "bad" discrimination is the amount of information on which the decision is based upon?
Logically then uber could add a "white only" option, "no queer" and "no leftist". (of course this is arbitrary but you can easily come up with a reason why: if you split any group of real people in two it's only natural that one group has an higher incidence of a negative trait)
This also has a second problem: what if we let the passenger know not only the sex but also if the driver ate fish in the morning (and hundreds of other useless facts)? Does that make it discrimination because they have far more information?
I guess not but then how do you decide what information is valuable in order to decide if there is enough information to judge the individual instead of going off statistics? How can you say that our theoretical racist patron is in fact racist and not going off the only valuable information?
That's a straw-man argument.
The reality is that if Uber rapes are an issue, and something like this is not allowed, women will just stop using it entirely.
Or special Uberpods will be developed where the driver is completely encased and the passenger has a "auto drive to police station" button.
my workplace has a no perfume/cologne policy, and we have lawyers on staff, so itd be interesting to find out it is.
"No perfume" is pretty simple, but "no smelling like curry" would clearly be at or over the line.
If an employer did the same thing, would you argue that's also not discriminatory? Or, to pick a notorious example, if a cake shop only agreed to sell to straight couples, would that be the same? If not, why not?
On account of it's the customer choosing the service provider, albeit with the help of filters provided by an aggregator, instead of service providers denying service to customers based on their belonging to a class.
edit: I missed that you can, as a woman driver, also filter out male riders.
I don't see how the distinction is material.
Actually, in this case, the rider _is_ a (temporary) employer.
These platforms connect service providers and consumers. That should be obvious, I think.
A better challenge would be if these same platforms allowed racial selections. Which I think everyone would be uncomfortable with in a way “let women avoid men” does not evoke.
Probably because of motivation. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of racially motivated bad behavior on these platforms, but there certainly is for gender-based bad behavior[1]
So the apparently-similar hyptothetixal is not that similar, though still useful for rhetoric.
1. https://uber.app.box.com/s/lea3xzb70bp2wxe3k3dgk2ghcyr687x3?... (Page 20)
Nobody seems to care that dating platforms (and porn I guess) are entirely built around racial selections, among others.
If a service is not widely available in the region, any systematic discrimination leading to refusing to provide service, or specific level of service or care, based on anything unrelated to the ability to provide it, should be illegal, locally, in that community. Rules like ousting disruptive customers apply across the board.
If a service is widely available, however, then “x-only” service providers should be allowed to operate (as indeed they are with women-only gyms, Jewish-only clubs, or nightclubs that let women in first and charge the men) as long as they advertise it up front and not make people go there only to find out that “ladies can go in free of charge, men pay $300 for a table with bottle service”
PS: replace “ladies” and “men” with “whites” and “blacks” and hear how that sounds. And no, citing crime or violence statistics shouldn’t play a role in shaping whether people can get into places, whether it’s women citing male vs bear violence / harassment or people citing racial FBI statistics on violence / harassment. This is the prosecutor’s fallacy.