Canada: Women-only ride services are fully legal, despite naysayers

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2016-04-25 23:23

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women-only ride-sharing services certainly seem to make sense following a spate of reports in which female passengers have been allegedly attacked, sexually assaulted and discriminated against by both Uber and traditional taxi drivers.

But how can a segregated ride service exist today at the exclusion of men? Isn’t that discriminatory?

“In the context of a women-only ride share program I don’t think it would breach the human rights code,” says Nicole Simes, an employment and human rights lawyer at MacLeod Law Firm in Toronto. “Presumably the purpose is to reduce sexual violence and harassment against women which is a justifiable reason for the differential treatment.”

The Ontario Human Rights Code protects people against discrimination on several grounds, one of which is gender, and there is a legal test to determine if, in fact, discrimination occurred. One of the determining factors looks at whether there was a justifiable reason for the unfair treatment and Simes believes in this case there is.'

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Comments

By this type of logic, all forms of discrimination are okay. All one needs as a criterion is fear of the group being discriminated against. This opens a pandora's box of epic proportions.

By this same logic, now homophobic male drivers can refuse to pick up gay males. Who knows whether or not the gay passengers will sexually assault or harass the driver? (I know that the odds of this scenario happening are actually astronomical, just using it to make a point)

Now racists have a reason not to pick up nonwhites. Statistically speaking, minorities tend to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Lower socioeconomic backgrounds have higher rates of crime. Thus, since the driver is simply trying to reduce the chances of violence against himself, it's okay.

Finally, why should cab drivers or other servicemen bother doing business with women? All it takes is one false accusation to ruin your life. Thus, they should be able to refuse female customers to stop this from happening.

Now, I want to make it clear that I think that all of these points are absolutely absurd and I completely disagree with them. I just wanted to show the depths of ridiculousness inherent in the logic being used to defend anti-male discrimination.

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Submitted by xtrnl on Tue, 2016-04-26 16:59