official opinion on “Chariot for Women”, the new Uber competitor that only hires women drivers and only picks up women:
women in Ubers are not at an elevated risk of sexual assault. most people who are sexually assaulted know their attackers. our societal obsession with the scary stranger as the prototypical case of sexual assault to protect ourselves from is deeply unhelpful.
women also commit sexual assault. saying “we’ll only hire female drivers, to keep our women safe” is buying into a narrative about female harmlessness and male predatoriness that helps female abusers and rapists get away with it.
In general, the fact that women are scared to be out at night and scared to call a cab is a problem. That fear is not remotely warranted by the evidence, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect and limit peoples’ lives. it is part of the same patriarchal “women can’t go out alone; they need protection” mindset that motivates some countries to require women have male chaperones. It is not feminist and feeding the unwarranted flames of this fear in the name of feminism is disgusting.
There’s this thing that keeps happening where people say “let’s unquestioningly accept the patriarchal narrative that women are pure, virtuous, and need protection. Let’s also unquestioningly accept the narrative that women are safe around other women, and that danger comes from men. Then, let’s come up with a plan for ‘empowering women’ that buys into both of those assumptions completely and in fact reinforces them! Why aren’t women empowered yet?”
On the bright side good on them for having an unequivocal “duh we take trans women, they’re women” policy. I guess if we’re going to all be subject to stupid empowerment-flavored pedestalization it may as well serve a population with a legit non-negligible risk of random strangers assaulting them.
Also, regular Uber is already able to be a lot safer for women than traditional cabs because both the driver and the passenger are identifiable from the app databases, while traditional cabs can easily be like “good luck trying to remember the license plate when you were totally wasted”.
Sexual assaults happen in ubers, and their numbers seem large because Uber carries so many people, and there has been some possibly-valid criticism about Uber not responding to them as well as they could/should (although taking it to the cops isn’t always that useful either, and if an abusive driver “only” loses their job it might be quite a bit more serious of a consequence than most assaulters get), but this is a relatively insignificant problem as far as the actual per capita numbers are concerned; and IMO only shows that Uber is evil, not dangerous.
(via metagorgon)
2 months ago · tagged #steel feminism #still less evil than traditional cartel cab companies though · 302 notes · source: theunitofcaring · .permalink