"It's a private company, they can do what they want". How is that going to unfold in Australia when Uber's policies allowing female drivers to refuse giving male passengers rides potentially runs afoul of refuse service laws? Corporate whims and tribunals are no friend of men's rights.

ObserverBlue · 2022-05-15T05:27:07+00:00

This reminds me of how in my country they recently suggested the idea of having female-only subway wagons (it already exists in some other countries).

"Think of women" may be the new "think of the children" (in fact, it's arguably not new, there's a reason "women and children" is a thing). I sometimes wonder whether at this point we will truly end up with separate female-only, male-only cities. I actually remember a comment on r/worldnews (the post was about the Taliban) saying how much women would love that idea for their own safety. Nothing like sharing the views of the Taliban on the fact that men and women should be segregated.

Anyone could have an extensive discussion about whether this in fact keeps women safe or not. But I personally wonder whether a world that practices segregation in the name of women's safety could unintentionally create a notion...that women are vulnerable and fragile (that would certainly be an irony, fighting sexism against women...only to create more sexism against women).

Personally? As long as men are still given the same services (whether by designating drivers, subway wagons or whatever), I wouldn't mind if they implemented female-only versions if they want. If they made sure to always have enough drivers that will attend men, good. If there were no such mechanism, then I would have a problem.

TheSpaceDuck · 2022-05-15T13:02:31+00:00

Can't even begin to imagine the outrage if white drivers could refuse black passengers "for safety"? I know a couple groups who, just like feminists, would claim "the statistics justify it".

throwaway20210821 · 2022-05-15T03:02:16+00:00

Another article about this, this time from LadBible: https://archive.ph/Vic04

A new policy in Australia will allow female drivers to reject giving rides to male passengers because of them being male and under the excuse of "safety" and increasing the amount of women passengers.

Apply this to any situation where discrimination on the basis of intrinsic characteristics is involved.

A business decides to limit service on whim to black customers using the excuse of wanting "safety for white customers" and "increasing the amount of white customers". Clearly unacceptable and illegal. It would be met with lawsuits, government investigations, and firing of the people on the company that oversaw this policy.

A business decides to limit service to gay customers using the excuse of wanting "safety for straight customers" and "increasing the amount of straight customers". Clearly unacceptable and illegal. It would be met with lawsuits, government investigations, and firing of the people on the company that oversaw this policy.

Here this policy is discriminating against male passengers on the basis of biological sex. Yet it is being defended, especially by feminists that claim to be champions of equal rights and not treating men any lesser than women.

Here is what the refuse service law in Australia has to say about this:

https://business.gov.au/people/customers/refuse-service#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Australian%20Human,gender%20identity%20and%20intersex%20status

It states that the only exceptions where discrimination by business may be permitted is due to behavior of a customer or "when factual evidence supports that the discrimination is reasonable in the circumstances.".

There is neither such acceptable reasons here. Male customers aren't more unruly than female customers and there is no factual evidence supporting that this kind of discrimination is acceptable. This move by Uber is purely meant as a way to marginalize its male customer base in hopes of getting more female customers.Yet it is being defended by feminists using the same neoliberal arguments that many here have heard before "it's a private company, they can do what they want".

This is an example of how corporate whims and policies and setups where this is even more extreme (like corporate tribunals) can be used to reverse civil rights, starting with groups that it is already acceptable to marginalize, such as men.

Who will utlimately triumph here? This will be a good situation imo to see how Australian government policies keeping corporate power in check fare against feminist identity politics.

throwaway20210821 · 2022-05-15T04:09:00+00:00

This is also applicable to efforts to constrain corporate power for a few reasons:

Leaving this issue to the free market is not guaranteed to work. There is the chance that this policy will be successful and mimicked by other ride sharing companies like Lyft and Bolt. That leaves men disenfranchised and out of options when trying to find any ride sharing apps.
This doesn't stop at ride sharing. The AA UK, a commercial road service company, has already announced it will be discriminating against men, offering transportation services to women first and foremost https://archive.is/LRJff
Policies like this can be used to deny men access to resources such as food, transportation and housing, given how many services previously offered by the government have become privatized and the rise of the gig economy. How for example will men stop policies like this (https://archive.ph/7KUH6) from being enacted when there are no administrations to vote out? If food and aid is controlled by a handful of companies and all those companies prioritize women in their official policies, how is anyone going to even stop them?
This is familiar to the issue of trade deals like the TPP further constricting speech in favor of corporations. What if policies like this being successfully unchallenged and left in place lead to corporate tribunals that feedback to more policies like this put in place? In the past few decades, it was internet censorship that was under threat from biased corporate policies like this. Now it seems like resource distribution is coming under assault, where men will be put last under disingenuous appeals to "safety" and maximizing marketshare of the "right" demographic (which isn't men).

It is very clear that Australian men need to sue Uber under the refuse service laws in an effort to get them to overturn this policy, or more policies like this (and not just in the ride sharing business, but other gig economy businesses, such as food and resource distribution) will become more common.

Some organizations they might be able to reach out to for help with this lawsuit are:

The Australian Men's Rights Association: https://australianmensrights.com/default.aspx

Men's Rights Agency: https://mensrights.com.au/

ChimpPimp20 · 2022-05-15T04:33:19+00:00

Imagine you finally land a job after acing the interview and take an uber to get there:

*Inner monologue*

Yes, I'm finally gonna make it out my mom and dad's basement!!

*Calls the building*

Yeah, so...I'm actually gonna be a bit late...

YooGeOh · 2022-05-15T08:03:56+00:00

I agree with the idea of female drivers only taking female passengers if they so wish. I disagree with inconveniencing the customer by matching them to a drover who can then refuse to take them.

Why not slightly amend the tech behind the app so that female drivers are only given female users in the first place, therefore eliminating the need for the driver to refuse a passenger?

It's almost like certain places would prefer to inconvenience themselves to make a political point than to actually help the people they claim to be helping

Frank_Bianco · 2022-05-15T06:16:32+00:00

I said it elsewhere, I'll say it here.

Good. I'd rather support a brother with my money.
They want to cut off their noses to spite their faces? More power to them. They can go whinge about the 'wage gap' after turning down all their fares.

peanutbutterjams · 2022-05-15T22:38:51+00:00

Late to this, but this just shows another of the problems with the gig economy.

While the legacy taxi industry is not perfect, the whole point of services like Uber is to reduce overheads like having to screen and train your drivers rigorously. Uber itself is there to make as much money as possible by providing as a little oversight and safe structure as possible.

What would you expect but people abusing it? You're basically getting into a car with a stranger who has almost no accountability to anyone.

Eventually, government regulations of gig economy services will impose so many costs that they cease to be more affordable and efficient than the legacy services they replaced.

FenaPugi · 2022-05-15T09:58:11+00:00

It's okay, men can just identify as a woman when their uber driver is a woman.

The second our feet touch the pavement we can go back to identifying as a man.

We'll be called: TransUbers

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