In 2012, shortly after Uber started operating in Los Angeles, Rachel Galindo bought a new car and signed up as a driver. She had worked as a journeyman carpenter, but contractors who used to hire her stopped calling after she transitioned her gender. Driving for Uber, Galindo hoped to avoid transphobia — after all, the company’s own billboards made the tantalizing promise: “Be your own boss.”
The harassment began almost immediately.
On three separate occasions, she said, passengers got into her car and, without saying anything else, simply asked, “How much for a BJ?” Another passenger kept referring to her as “it” during the ride and, when Galindo asked her to stop, the passenger responded, “Well, I just don’t know ‘what’ you are.”
She repeatedly complained to Uber about such incidents, but she said the company would only respond using generic emails — it took three years of lodging regular complaints for an actual Uber employee to call Galindo on the phone to discuss the repeated harassment.
“I kept crying for help,” she said. “But no one was listening.”
Galindo said that she sees parallels between her experience and that of Susan Fowler, the former engineer at Uber’s corporate headquarters in Silicon Valley who published a blog post in February detailing a culture of sexual harassment inside Uber. Within hours, the company had sprung into action: Board member Arianna Huffington demanded an investigation; the company retained former Attorney General Eric Holder to head up an inquiry; and CEO Travis Kalanick called a company-wide meeting, where he reportedly began crying with remorse. (Neither Huffington nor Holder responded to requests for comment.)
Watching the Fowler scandal unfold, Galindo said she couldn’t help but feel overlooked. “I do think Susan [Fowler] and I were victims of the same ‘bro-fraternity’ culture at Uber,” she said. “But for us female drivers, it’s different than with engineers. The company views us as expendable, as having no value at all.”
Uber is now in the midst of a company-wide review of its sexual harassment policies. Although the review was supposed to wind down last month, in a memo to Uber staff in late April Huffington said that Holder was going to take until the end of May “to ensure that no stone is left unturned.” Despite the promise of a thorough investigation, a company spokesperson confirmed that the sexual harassment review only includes the treatment of its full-time employees like Fowler. Drivers like Galindo, the spokesperson said, don’t qualify because they are contract workers.
Only a small fraction of women who make their living from Uber, however, are in Fowler’s position. The company technically only employs around 2,000 women. The vast majority of women who make their living from Uber are independent contract drivers like Galindo. The company, which only releases driver data selectively, typically when it seems to serve the company’s PR goals, reported that around 20 percent of its drivers were female, and that it had signed up 230,000 new female drivers in 2015. It has promised that, by 2020, more than a million women will be driving for the platform, an important milestone as Uber competes for women riders with startups like the female-focused Safr.
Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg News/Getty Images
Female Uber drivers are in uncharted terrain, at the very frontier of a massive tech company’s freewheeling experiment with a new kind of employee-employer relationship. They’re considered independent contractors, even though Uber still exerts significant control over their work-lives: The company can terminate drivers for low ratings or for canceling too many trips, and as the New York Times recently reported, it even manipulates them with physiological tricks and subliminal inducements to work longer hours. These women drivers of course also share the same challenges as any women in customer service: They expose themselves to unwanted sexual advances and harassing comments just like, say, a cashier at Starbucks; the reprehensible behavior of customers isn’t the fault of the company.
Yet Uber has created a totally new dynamic: It has recruited thousands of women drivers and arranged for them to be with strange men in private cars — which don’t have the traditional taxicab Plexiglas barriers installed. In theory, Uber also has unprecedented resources to create a safe work environment for these women. It’s collected piles of data from its customers; their real names, phone numbers, and financial information, along with their movements and travel habits. And unlike a Starbucks, it can unilaterally ban harassers from its platform, by simply kicking them off the app. But while the company has plowed untold resources into recruiting drivers and keeping them on the platform, many female drivers said that discouraging and investigating sexual harassment on the job has not been the company’s priority.
“That chauvinistic corporate culture, that’s something we women drivers feel very intensely,” said Tracy, an Uber driver in Portland, Oregon, and the administrator for an online community of more than 1,000 female drivers. Tracy, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals from Uber, coaches drivers on staying safe on the job. She said she has mentored dozens of female drivers and never met a single one who’s satisfied with how Uber responds to reports of sexual harassment or unwanted sexual advances during a ride.
Former Uber driver Rachel Galindo drives around her neighborhood to show The Intercept’s photographer the car she often used for work with the company on April 30, 2017, in Los Angeles.
Photo: Dania Maxwell for The Intercept
“It’s a tough issue, a lot of ‘he said, she said,’” Tracy admitted. But she argued that the company’s current policy, where Uber follows up complaints with generic responses, at least some of them apparently prewritten, is not up to the task of dealing with such issues at all. In nearly two years of driving, Tracy has never been comfortable with how Uber handled her own reports of sexual harassment. In two particularly egregious examples, she said the company didn’t respond when she submitted a complaint about a couple who had sex in her car, or to another about a male passenger who appeared to be physically menacing his female companion.
“For Uber to say that they take sexual harassment of drivers seriously — that’s mind-boggling to me,” Tracy said. If a driver has to end a ride because of a sexually harassing passenger, Tracy thinks Uber should at the very least follow up with a phone call and make drivers aware that it is earnestly trying to get to the bottom of the incident, instead of brushing it aside as just another sub-par Uber ride.
Uber disputes that characterization. “Sexual harassment is not tolerated,” read a written Uber statement provided by a spokesperson. “We want everyone to have a good Uber experience, and that starts with mutual respect. Anyone who is found to violate our community guidelines may lose their access to Uber.” The spokesperson said that when investigating claims of discrimination or harassment, the company would “reach out to the driver by phone to gather more information and check on his or her wellbeing. Following that, we would proceed with a full review of the matter, which includes speaking to the rider, reviewing trip data and history, and any other relevant facts.”
The spokesperson also pointed to a post on Uber’s website titled “The Golden Rule.” “Treat people as you would like to be treated yourself. It’s a universal truth we were all taught by our parents,” the post reads. “That’s important here at Uber.”
The driver rating screen in an Uber app is displayed Feb. 12, 2016 in Washington.
Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
But female Uber drivers can easily find themselves in a predicament. Uber riders rate each driver on a five-star scale and, if a driver’s average dips just a few tenths of a point below perfect, Uber can terminate her. So women are under intense pressure to tolerate sexual harassment with a smile.
“Because of how those ratings work, there’s an overall sense of fear among drivers that they could lose their jobs,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director at the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a union that includes more than 5,000 Uber drivers. “For women drivers — these are often working-class women — they are struggling to make ends meet.” Female drivers of taxis have longed faced similar challenges in terms of sexual harassment, though Desai said that the glass partition in traditional cabs does offer women drivers a greater sense of security. And unlike Uber drivers, female cab drivers can’t be fired for low ratings.
Danielle, a female Uber driver in California, recalled one harrowing ride during which she endured harassment from drunken passengers in silence for fear of a bad rating. “When I told the passengers I had seven children, one of the guys said, ‘Your vagina must be wrecked,’” she told me in an interview for the website The Verge. “Driving for Uber, this is my job, and if my rating gets too low, I can lose it.” So instead of confronting the passengers, Danielle laughed alongside her drunken riders.
The Uber spokesperson said drivers who think they’ve received a low rating because of bias or want to flag problematic passengers can lodge such complaints inside the app. An Uber driver shared screenshots of the app’s complaint system: After a ride with a harassing passenger, drivers have two options. They can flag a rider as “unpleasant” — with a text box to elaborate — or report a “serious incident,” something the app defines as anything that impacted the driver’s “personal safety or ability to complete this trip.”
What happens afterward can often be impersonal, maddening, time-consuming, and entirely lacking in transparency, female drivers said.
Of course a driver can also end a ride prematurely and kick the passenger out — but the Uber app, drivers said, does not distinguish between a driver who terminated a ride because a passenger was harassing, or for a more generic reason, such as a passenger who wanted the driver to speed or make an illegal U-turn. After a driver files a complaint about an unpleasant rider, the Uber app produces an automated response: “Your concerns about this rider have been noted, and we’ll make sure you don’t get matched with them again. Please let us know if there’s anything more we can do to support you. We are here to help.”
Following up, Tracy said, is a total waste of time. At the very least, she said, Uber should have a dedicated reporting system for sexual harassment and discrimination — instead of lumping those complaints in with more mundane complaints about a faulty GPS system, or passengers eating messy food.
For its part, Uber said it has dedicated teams in Phoenix and Chicago for issues it considers serious or sensitive and that the teams are provided with weeks of training. It would not answer questions about what, if any, training support staff had to field sexual harassment allegations, how many people work on special teams, and how Uber flags complaints drivers submit to make sure the appropriate team is called in to investigate.
Indeed, Uber does not make public how exactly it handles sexual harassment allegations from female drivers beyond a blanket promise that incidents will be “investigated.” One of the only glimpses into Uber’s internal process came in 2016, when someone leaked screenshots from the company’s system to BuzzFeed showing more than 10,000 customer support records related to sexual assault and rape between December 2012 and August 2015 (the report did not include sexual harassment complaints). Uber said BuzzFeed’s statistics were misleading. It claimed that the screenshots included claims where the words “sexual assault” and “rape” were used in communications with customers, but were not official complaints of incidents. At the time, Uber claimed “fewer than” 170 of these records represented actual sexual assault complaints and declined to explain to BuzzFeed how it determined the credibility of rape and sexual assault claims.
Photo: Dania Maxwell for The Intercept
No matter the numbers, women drivers said lodging a complaint is like shouting into a void — Uber does not alert them to the outcome of its investigations, citing privacy concerns.
In one instance, Galindo flagged a male rider who moved to touch her arm in way that made her uncomfortable. “[He is] a big dude, tightly fitting on the front passenger seat, raise[s] his left arm and tries to lay his hand on me,” she wrote in a note to Uber. “I raise[d] my right arm and push his hand with my forearm.” The man relented, but he had been making some off-color comments about women during the ride, and Galindo thought Uber should be alerted.
Galindo shared Uber’s response to the incident, a generic email that thanked her for being professional but didn’t indicate the incident would be followed up on. “I can understand why you wrote in about this. I know that not all trips will have 5-star riders,” an Uber rep who identifies herself as Danica wrote. “We trust and appreciate your professionalism and judgment to handle challenging situations like this one.”
On another occasion, Galindo wrote to Uber to complain that she was receiving biased ratings as a result of being transgender. “DON’T RESPOND WITH THE FOLLOWING,” she wrote, posting a generic response she had received from the company in the past, which concluded: “‘Please don’t worry about any individual trip rating. Every driver gets an angry rider once in a while.’”
An Uber rep named Angilla then responded with a variation on that exact message. “I understand your frustration here and I’m happy to help,” she wrote. “Please don’t worry about any individual trip rating. Every driver gets an angry rider once in a while.”
When presented with Galindo’s emails, Uber said her complaints were investigated by a team that specializes in accessibility and discrimination issues but would not elaborate further.
An Uber driver waits for a customer in Boston on April 22, 2016.
Photo: Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Galindo and other drivers obsessively try to avoid low ratings because recovering from a rating-related deactivation is not easy. Drivers can pay to take a course — similar to traffic school — to get reinstated. Or they can go to their local “Greenlight Hub,” brick and mortar offices that the company operates in major cities; there drivers can meet with representatives face to face and plead their cases.
“If you go in, you aren’t allowed to bring anyone with you — no lawyers, not even a friend to translate, if English isn’t your first language,” said Dawn Gearhart, a Teamsters Union official who organizes Uber drivers in Washington state. Gearhart also said she was once thrown out of a Greenlight Hub in Seattle when she tried to help a driver who didn’t speak English navigate the appeal process last year. Uber denied this, and said translators and lawyers are welcome to accompany drivers at the Hubs, although representatives there will not interact with lawyers without involving Uber’s legal team.
“In my experience, almost all the Uber employees at the Hub are men,” said Tracy, the driver from Portland, based on visits to deal with payment issues.
Uber said it has a 24/7 team that responds to drivers in distress, and that it hires former law enforcement officials to investigate claims. The company said it uses GPS data and customer information to support its investigations, but beyond that a company spokesperson would not clarify what exactly constitutes a full “investigation” of sexual harassment by passengers. The spokesperson also would not clarify how drivers can appeal outcomes they don’t think are fair, and what criteria the company uses to determine if a driver’s claims are credible at all.
Beth, a female driver in Los Angeles who’s been working with Uber for the past four years and asked that her real name not be used, said the company has gotten more responsive over time to drivers who have negative experiences with a passenger. “When they first launched out here, sometimes you’d lodge a complaint and you’d get zero response — just silence,” she recalled. “Now, if it’s something serious involving violence or really intense harassment, and you want to get the police involved, sure, you’ll get a call from Uber.”
The Uber spokesperson emphasized that the company’s approach to sexual harassment has evolved over time, but would not specify what new procedures were introduced at what time. Uber did quietly add a “critical safety response” line in some cities recently, where drivers can report a violent incident. But Uber hasn’t publicly clarified if the number is intended to be a venue for women to report sexual harassment or discrimination, or if it’s simply intended for potentially illegal and violent incidents. And a recent report by The Guardian revealed that Uber apparently refused to share a passenger’s information with law enforcement, even after a female driver accused the passenger of sexual assault.
Photo: Dania Maxwell for The Intercept
“There’s a whole lot of space between what’s inappropriate and what’s illegal,” explained Beth Robinson, an associate at Fortis Law Partners who writes a regular column on employment law for the legal publication Above the Law. “These Uber drivers find themselves in that space a lot of the time.”
And drivers who feel that the company hasn’t taken sexual harassment from riders seriously have limited legal recourse, Robinson added. “Anti-harassment policies exist to protect employees at companies,” she said. “Not third-party interactions, like those of passengers and contract Uber drivers.”
Certain states, including California, where Galindo lives, have extended some sexual harassment protections to contractors. But, since the harassment comes from customers and not supervisors, a driver would have to assert Uber is creating a “hostile work environment,” a high legal bar that requires proof that the treatment is “severe” or “pervasive.”
“If the complaint process for sexual harassment is, in essence, a black hole, and a number of women have brought this to the attention of the company and the company has refused to do something about it — then there could be some potential liability,” said Paula Brantner, a lawyer and former executive director of Workplace Fairness, a nonprofit that advocates for workplace rights.
Even in the absence of a lawsuit, Brantner suggested that Uber should take the opportunity to review how it fields driver complaints. “If there is not a legal remedy, there needs to be an HR remedy,” she said.
And, in the wake of the Fowler scandal, for instance, Uber CEO Kalanick did promise to order “an independent review into the specific issues relating to the workplace environment raised by Susan Fowler, as well as diversity and inclusion at Uber more broadly.”
But omitting drivers from the policy review, Brantner said, suggests that the company is not addressing sexual harassment in earnest in all its forms. “The drivers are the essence of the company — compared to the relatively small number of women who work at corporate headquarters,” she said.
Uber may be betting that female drivers won’t stick around long enough to get a full picture of how the company handles sexual harassment claims. A 2015 study indicated that one in four Uber drivers were new to the platform in a given month, and that about half of new drivers quit within the first year. Uber, for its part, insists that many of its drivers sign up as a temporary stopgap — to make some money in between full-time jobs — and that the turnover rate is perfectly natural.
Though Tracy says every driver’s experience is different, many do leave Uber because of harassing passengers. “Great drivers quit,” she said.
Galindo kept driving for Uber for four years because she said workplace discrimination prevented her landing steady carpentry jobs. She’s recently stopped working for Uber, however, after a friend offered her a well-paying job overseeing a team of carpenters on a construction site.
She has considered filing a suit. But ultimately, the same economic forces that pressure female drivers to endure harassment on the job also dissuaded her from pursuing it. “I live paycheck to paycheck, [it’s] hard to afford time off,” she said. “I just don’t have the means to buy justice.”
Update: May 4, 7:05 p.m.
This piece was updated to include additional details sent by Uber after publication, including to dispute some of Gearhart’s statements about Greenlight Hubs.
Top photo: Former Uber driver Rachel Galindo poses for a portrait in her Los Angeles home on April 30, 2017.
I can’t believe after everything people still use uber. I use the taxi app E-HAIL (www.goehail.com) same convenience but real drivers and regulated.
The Intercept should dedicate a portion of its website to bashing Uber. That way, they can aggregate all their anti-Uber news in one convenient location where corrupt politicians, taxi cartels, and control freaks can read about their favorite topic.
Here’s the thing. THEY DONT WORK FOR UBER! It is the equivalent of saying Google doesn’t investigate fraud as a result of connecting a user of search to a dodgy store.
You read the part about the tyranny of the “five stars” and how a few tenths of a star less makes them ineligible to drive? Uber is your boss if you have to meet their rating system. I pity the drivers who run across some demented creature from the deep internet such as myself that, if using their service, would have been as like as not to rate an average trip as three stars because that’s average. ;)
So wait – what can Uber do to screen out bigots (or even *potential( bigots) ahead of the fact? If customers are going to insult a trans driver, that’s bad, but what, specifically, can/should Uber do about it? And what should they do differently to prevent this, for example, that taxi companies should not?
Some of these comments are disappointing.
I use uber is a very polite state so I haven’t head about these problems. I’m disappointed in the company but not surprised.
Thanks for the wonderful reporting.
?
As far as I am concerned, the negative PR surrounding this company is impossible to ever dismiss. I wouldn’t contribute to Uber in any fashion, shape, or form.
This is a disgusting company – and a great article, Mr Shapiro.
This is exactly how the company should be handling the problem:
“Your concerns about this rider have been noted, and we’ll make sure you don’t get matched with them again.
There are millions of customer-facing employees out there who would be absolutely thrilled if they could just report a customer and then never have to deal with that person ever again.
WTF is the company supposed to do? Ban every single user who said some mean things and hurt the driver’s feelings?
If you can’t deal with rude, obnoxious customers, it’s time to get out of the retail sector.
Uber is a scam on a grand scale. Their entire model rests on the specious assertion that all of those drivers are independent contractors.
And as for hiring Eric Holder to investigate anything? LULZ.
Interestingly the independent contractor argument doesn’t work in the U.K. At the tribunal level the company’s drivers were ruled to be employees. Of course, Uber appealed and will appeal as far up the adjudicative chain as they can to overturn the ruling and characterization of the employment relationship, but it is something to keep an eye on. Awhile back there was a class action suit in the U.S. as well over the same legal issue. It was settled out of court, I suspect to avoid a precedent that held the drivers are employees. Hopefully, another one will pop up somewhere or the other in the country. This is a company that I would very much enjoy watching die the death of a thousand cuts. Kalanick is a nasty kettle of fish. So is his company.
The article gives the impression that driving for Uber is the only employment opportunity available to these women. Forced to endure sexual harassment for a good rating? You are hardly an independent contractor. If you want a good driving job, work for a cab company.
Women will always be relegated to second class jobs if they continue to act like inferior humans. If you deserve rights, fight for them and stop whining.
Uber installs a GPS and associated communications equipment. Why not also a video (or even audio) recorder in this device as well? This would go a long way toward enforcing good behavior among passsengers.
Food call on the Vimage, vagina!
As a human, as a parent, as a friend, i always caution those around me to avoid getting in bad situations. Yep, i get the legality of it all, but as my ww2 relatives used to say “it does not undo the harms done” so i would not use the Uber bc if you think sex harassement is a problem, wait till you get smashed, knifed or gunned. All those hitchhicker warnings are still valid with a few wxceptions. Uber is a parasite, thriving on the notpaying people. Grateful Galindo was able to secure herself elsewhere.
There’s a new show coming on the Fox Network that they are elated and excited about… it’s called,
“The Pussy Grabbers” starring, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and ongoing cameo appearances featuring Donald Trump playing the “PGOUS!” Pussy Grabber of the United States!
Brought to you by “Viagra for the Brain” for Trump Supporters and the Republican Party who can’t get their “thinking skills up!” If you’re stuck on a thought for more than a year, like repealing Obamacare, stop taking “Viagra for the Brain” immediately and seek psychological help! VFTB has been know to cause “Useful Idiot Syndrome” in people who are racist or were born with the Genetic Defect of Colonialism, Racism, Imperialism and White the Supremacy Gene! Please Enjoy the Show!
Regards,
Contact me “SNL”… I’ve got Mad Skills! Without the use of “VFTB!”
I admire the photograph of the two autobahns joining or spreading if you prefer. Very suggestive and to the point. Wonder what Bill Nonclit and Hillary Clitnon think about that ?
Hey, this is The Intercept. Most readers looking at that photograph are thinking only about where to plant the explosives on those pillars to bring that high overpass down on the rest and shut down the city. ;)
Of which of the two sociopathic parties do you sport a membership card?
Uber simply has to create a profile of every user, including their political predilections, alcohol consumption history and sexual orientation. Drivers can then choose passengers that are 100% compatible (and vice versa). Uber is a young company and hasn’t yet perfected its business model. Give it time.
Uber’s business model is based on bribing and pressurizing city authorities to comply with their third rate taxi service. They can, thanks to very rich shareholders, dig deep into their pockets and harass the city blokes into submission with high-profile lawyers and corrupt political pressure. All this happened with the direct connivance and encouragement of Obama, which is why it isn’t any wonder that Eric Holder is up to his mischief once again there though the revolving door.
I don’t understand the point of this article.
I think you’re at higher risk for abuse in one on one situations.
Men hit on women, Uber can’t change that. I always wonder if being hit on nicely makes it ok.
Mixing the issues you face as a trans working person in that profession and general sexism..corporate issues dealing with that.
It’s a very long article.
There is a lot of benefit being a female, but you sometimes need to think on your toes..and always keep a ready knee.
Maybe this would be better at HuffPo than here. Nice the woman got another job.
That V highway photo was a little odd, too.
Right on. You have women, as you said, getting harassed when certain men think they can get away with it, which happens everywhere, including workplaces. It’s surely worse for trans people, yes. Yet, for all the possible valid criticisms of Uber, the author chose to highlight something the company has absolutely no control over. And it’s not any different with, for lack of a better term, “real” taxi services. I don’t know what the actual numbers are, but in my personal experience, there seem to be a lot more men in the taxi driver profession than women. And the women who do drive tend to be rather thick-skinned – neither easily fazed nor insulted and certainly not quick to take the garbage spewed by drunks and low-lifes personally.
Woah. Harassment is not “surely worse for trans people.” I am so utterly sick of the sexism women, biological WOMEN, face every day being erased by the transgender movement. We just need to be more “thick-skinned” according to you.
I loved the V freeway photo. I live here and never saw a shot like this.
It is definitely an interesting photo and certainly good photo. I only meant odd because of the article.
It does have a sublime look of one the sexes..not sure which now one, though.
I have no idea why should anybody care about this.
The problem is that there are many oversensitive snowflakes that melt-down.
Somehow men are supposed to endure boot-camp being denegrated, insulted, trashed, and abused, while some boorish WORDS – not even deeds – are considered reason for a lawsuit.
I’m sick and tired of women wanting it both ways. They are equal – until some bad words are used? Men put up with far worse.
And the article just has, has, to bring transgender into the discussion. That someone pretending to be a woman who has an adam’s apple, brow ridges, and speaks in a baritone, but otherwise seems to be a woman, or a drag-queen must be accepted? Can I not be offended at the lie?
Uber would be better off to allow passengers to select white cis-males to avoid the problem. And let women pick “women” (biological or “I happen to identify as one today”) drivers.
Thin skin v.s. thick skin? Maybe that should rate the driver. A snowflake that has a meltdown v.s. some driver that can tolerate all suggestions of the political spectrum.
What does the intercept tolerate?
phew look at these two winners
you can always count on internet comments to see the worst of humanity
There are some parts of this issue that I fail to understand and while I don’t hold awfully high views of Uber and its practices, it does seem as though they’re being expected to provide the protections of a traditional company, which they are not. I’m not so sure that drivers understand, really, what it means to “Be your own boss”. To some it means that there are problems and challenges that one must face and solve, without the direct help of support structures that traditionally exist within a company. Uber has sold many on the idea that they can privately own a car, choose their own hours, and work for themselves, however they have not been entirely up front about the more unfavorable implications that come packaged with those freedoms.
Admittedly, this isn’t to say Uber has no part in ensuring quality experiences for both its contractors and the customers they serve – it certainly does, as a matter of doing good business – but it seems like many of the complaints outlined in the article can be addressed by simply having intelligent driver AND rider feedback systems on the whole. As I recall, the early days of Uber had drivers rating riders as well as the reverse. Did this system vanish? Did it become ineffective? If so then perhaps that is the reason for such apparently rampant abuse of drivers by riders. It seems hasty to assume that the fix is to hold Uber responsible for punishing offenders on a case-by-case basis or make special cases based on gender or type of offense. In a well-tuned system, both riders and drivers would have ratings based on actual, justifiable merit and repeat offenders turned away with explanation as to why; when incidents border into the territory of illegal (as some cited examples sound) then Uber, thankfully, is not the local police department.
Found the outraged middle-aged white guy who doubles down being transphobic. What a treat!
You must not live in one of the 95% of the USA that went for Trump.
But I’m not sure what “transphobic” even means since it seems to be the latest insult, deplorable, racist, Nazi (I’m anti-socialist), sexist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, and the old one, anti-semitic if you don’t love Netanyahu’s policies.
Sorry, but as Bill Nye said in the 1990’s before science was politicized, gender is binary, with maybe a 5 sigma exception for something broken (XY, but testosterone resistant, hermaphrodite). But you either have a Y chromosome or don’t.
Pointing out Gender Science Denial somehow isn’t acceptable. Climate changes but gender doesn’t. A eunuch on estrogen is not a woman and cannot be made one.
While I can be sympathetic to body dysphoria (including those who want to amputate their limbs), I can’t consider it normal or sane.
I’m also for going full libertarian – you associate with whom you want, and I will do the same. No violence or coercion on either side including government coercion. But your side is the one that wants to “burn down Memories’ Pizza” and throw Kim Davis in a dungeon for thought crime forever. If you want to live in a deep blue liberal virtual signalling enclave among people you want to show you support, have at it, but let me do the same. I won’t tell you or anyone from the LGBTQ community what to do or how to live, but only if you show me the same courtesy. I believe in live and let live. And to use discussion not coercion or violence – the first amendment which is now dead at Berkeley and elsewhere courtesy of your side. Why Trump? Fear of Christians, guns and gun owners, people who want traditonal families and classical education.
I don’t hate people with different lifestyles and opinions until they want to get someone to point a gun at my head and tell me to recant of my heresy or be re-educated Mao or Stalin style, or just killed.
Kipling has a poem, “When the Saxon began to hate”. Seeing everything I hold dear vandalized or destroyed moved me to action. Although I was bothered by Wendy Carlos, I still liked her music and probably could have had a rational conversation. Now each side considers the other irredemably evil and wants to imprison or do violence or even kill them. I regret it got to this point.
I keep my guns and cash in my bedroom. I’d like the government to stay out of my bedroom, but liberals insist on sending the SWAT team in to seize my hard earned property.
the investigation is a sham. It is trying to see how to hide it. They havent contacted any ex employees … so they care only about employees when they blog about harassment.
If I went around wearing a horse’s head mask, people would think I am a weird person and I would get negative responses. If I went around wearing my clothes backwards, people would think I am a weird person and give me negative responses. And if I’m trying to appear as if I’m the opposite gender, and not completely pulling it off, people would think I’m a weird person and give negative feedback.
But its only the latter where we have to do something about this! At what point do people accept the fact that they are weird, and not everyone is going to be able/willing/mature enough to treat them like everyone else? Lots of us get to that point, and stop expecting titanic cultural shifts and denial of human nature from everyone else.
I think “physiological tricks” is meant to read “psychological”…