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Lyft’s Gift to Gender Ideology’s Critics

A woman's silhouette holds a smartphone with the Lyft logo displayed on the screen.

Lyft’s new policy to reduce sexual assaults matches female and “nonbinary” drivers and riders. The problem: The Left lets predators identify as women or nonbinary without question, which allows them to specifically request female drivers. (Photo Illustration: Rafael Henrique, SOPA Images, LightRocket/Getty Images)

Thank you, Lyft. You just made debunking transgenderism that much easier.

The rideshare operator recently announced a new policy in certain cities called Women+ Connect, where female and so-called nonbinary drivers can prioritize bookings with female and nonbinary riders.

Nonbinary is a made-up term for people who think they’re neither male nor female.

The move comes on the heels of multiple complaints surrounding female safety in recent years. Between 2017 and 2019, the company reported 4,158 cases of sexual assault. Lyft said it hoped this new program would help women feel safer using the app.

“Women drivers tell us it’s hard to drive at night,” Lyft’s executive vice president of customers, Jody Kelman, told The New York Times. “We need to remove a barrier for women drivers today.”

If there are no riders who fit the female/nonbinary bill, drivers will still be matched with men.

They’ll probably be matched with men anyway because there’s a glaring issue with both this new policy and gender ideology as a whole: It’s all based on gender self-identification.

While drivers for Lyft need to provide a driver’s license and pass a criminal background check to prove who they are, riders are under no such obligation. A rider can describe himself or herself however he or she chooses, and the driver won’t know the truth until pickup.

What’s to stop a predatory man from identifying as a woman or nonbinary person in order to get easier access to vulnerable female drivers? Men posing as women don’t have to look or dress like women to get leftist acceptance as “real women,” and being nonbinary is such a nebulous term that any man could effortlessly pretend to be it as well.

It seems almost inevitable that unsavory elements of society will take advantage of this prime opportunity to target women. The Left’s new push to completely obliterate gender has made women less safe and given evil men the freedom to violate them as they see fit.

In the U.K., a vile male rapist miraculously discovered he was “actually” a woman the moment it was time to go to jail. Adam Graham, who’s now going by the name Isla Bryson, demanded he be sent to a women’s prison because of his transgender identity. The Left, having painted itself into a corner where a woman is defined by whoever says he or she is a woman, was forced to comply. Doing otherwise would destroy the foundation of gender self-identification.

This isn’t just happening abroad; it’s happening here, too. The Daily Signal reported that “more than half of the men housed in Wisconsin Department of Corrections facilities who identify as transgender women have been convicted of at least one count of sexual assault or sexual abuse.”

There is ample evidence to show evil men will use this gender loophole as a means of accessing women they can violate. Lyft is shortsightedly attempting to solve the problem of violence against women while using a fundamentally flawed premise to achieve that goal. There will be assaults by men gaming the system, and Lyft will be culpable.

Forget the can, Lyft has opened itself up to a massive barrel of worms here. Two scenarios are likely. As mentioned above, a man will identify as a woman or nonbinary person and attack a woman. Lyft gets hit with a lawsuit over not protecting its female drivers.

Or a man will identify as a woman or nonbinary person, a female driver will refuse to pick him up because she doesn’t want to get in the car with a potential sexual predator, then Lyft gets sued for facilitating discrimination.

The entire policy shines a massive spotlight on the most obvious problem with gender ideology. Self-identification—the idea that biological reality must bend to the will of the feelings—causes a multitude of issues.

And the policy makes women less safe. From male rapists in women’s prisons to men flashing their genitals in women’s locker rooms, the longer men are able to say they are whatever they feel they are, the more women will be hurt.

Lyft deserves a big thank you. It has given those of us critical of the gender ideology movement a gift: a crystal clear picture of how harmful gender ideology is for women, and one that sane people can point to for years to come.

One hopes that Lyft and the Left quickly see the errors of their ways before more women get hurt.

If not, it looks like Lyft is about to be taken for a ride.

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