The Social Complex

Short Men, Eww, They’re Genetically Deformed →

TSC: check out this rant by a fairly depressed short guy who seems to have given up on the fight and adopted society’s view of his height.  The author does not bother to criticize heightism directly, but instead cites a bunch of studies and statistics about the plight of short men.  Then, at the end of his rant, he basically throws his hands in the air and implies that all short men are doomed….dooooomed….doooooooooooomed.

The comments are also very interesting.  Some of them are par for the course (“why don’t you man up and quit whining”).  But some of them are very helpful and positive without being pollyanna. 

Short Men, Eww, They’re Genetically Deformed

Sep. 24, 2012

By Andrea Benito

Being short sucks.

I’m a 5’5″ (165 cm) tall, male. That is, I’m five inches shorter than your average American man who checks in at 5’10. Average Joe towers over me and a good chunk of the US female population does too.

How do I feel about being short? I’ll say it with feeling this time: It seriously sucks. It’s like walking around with the hashtag #DEFORMED tattooed on your forehead and the words “LOSER WITH BAD GENES” inscribed on your chest in a big, bold neon font.

Look at short people in Hollywood. Tom Cruise, 5’7″, and Jason Alexander, 5’4″, are probably the two most famous short actors. Tom Cruise is know for being a crazy maniac and Jason Alexander is famous for playing George Costanza on Seinfeld, an awkward/short/fat guy who can’t get women…..

The Popular Post Feminist Heroine in Relation to Heightism

TSC: I have to give credit to supportfortheshort.org for sparking my curiosity as to a disturbing trope which often arise within our popular culture with regards to heightism.  An article recently appeared on Fortune online about the rise of Women in the United States in terms of economic and political power.  The article is essentially a book review for Hanna Rosin’s novel, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, which is described as “an exploration of the modern career woman and her effect on the economy, gender norms, and masculine self-worth”.  In it, Rosin interviews real people in order to support her thesis that changing gender norms within our society are the result of changing economic circumstances.  And here we have an example of life imitating art.

With a cocktail in hand at a Yale Business School party, Sabrina chats about her likes (red wine, Lady Gaga, and Angela Merkel) and her dislikes (short men, FDBs — financial douche bags — and immature texts from scorned exes). The green-eyed beauty could easily roll with Carrie Bradshaw’s posse. She’s single, poised, successful, and attractive — “one of a kind” is how an old flame describes her.

Whether Sabrina is a real person or a conglomeration of characteristics of many different women is irrelevant to the discussion because attitudes like this have become quite common.  Here we have an ivy educated woman in her early 30s, who we also latter discover is a banker, casually professing her hate for a group of people without apparent shame - as if her disdain were completely rational and obvious.  Sabrina perfectly demonstrates that lumping bad behavior, professional rudeness, and short men into the same category is completely appropriate in mixed company or even when talking to a journalist.  Now, all of this begs the question, “does Sabrina’s demeanor in relation to heightism remind you of anything?”

Sex and the City (1998-2004) has been hailed among critics as a groundbreaking work of entertainment which has spawned several copycat shows and has had an indomitable impact on our popular culture.  One could also argue that the show represented a sort of post feminist ethic of the modern heroine.  On the one hand, this post feminist modern heroine is celebrated for her economic power and social independence, but on the other hand, this same power and social independence is conflated with a culture of excessive consumerism; where femininity is defined by the clothes one wears, the men one associates herself with, and the parties one attends.  And of course, such a vapid and consumerist ethic (where image matters more than substance) does not bode well for short men who live in a heightist society.  We can see this during several episodes in which short men were openly ridiculed or shunned for being short, presumably because short men were intended to represent the antithesis of the “fabulousness” depicted by the show’s lead characters who were, in turn, meant to be aspirational role-models for their young audiences. 

Take, for example, an episode from Season 6 entitled “Splat!”.  All you have to watch is the first two minutes to get the idea.  It doesn’t even require a set up.  And after that, you also may want to see (08:20-8:40) for a very subtle cautionary message to the viewer that old women lose their fabulousness with age and so you may want to find a partner quickly - lest you end up with a short man.

And please do not assume that the attitudes expressed in popular culture in regards to the post feminist heroine are regulated to dating.  The attitudes about feminism and short male inferiority are widespread and appear in several episodes of the series and its progeny.  The problem is not about attraction, or lack thereof, but about attitudes which are normalized and spread into the real world through entertainment such as this.  It represents a dangerous aesthetic which further encourages a type of intolerance which is rarely criticized. 

Other shows following the Sex and the City model of the post feminist heroine include:

To be completely honest, I’ve never actually watched “lipstick jungle”, but I’ve read enough synopsizes about the show to confidently place it within the Sex and the City genre.  But I have direct knowledge that the other shows listed here make negative comments about short men throughout their respective series.  In fact, if memory serves, a character in “Cashmere Mafia” had something bad to say about short men in Episode ONE, Season ONE of the show (though I couldn’t find the clip on youtube). 

For some of you, this may seem trivial.  You might think, “what’s the harm” and “everyone has their own opinions and biases”.  Well, why that may be true, we have to consider the social consequences which arise from a cultural paradigm in which the open disdain for short men is considered a function of female empowerment.  Remember that “Sabrina” from Hanna Rosin’s book is a Yale educated banker.  Would I, as a proud short man, want to be sitting across the table from Sabrina, my bank’s loan officer, trying to negotiate a rate on my home mortgage or a business loan?  Should I be concerned if Sabrina, my stock broker, suggests a great investing strategy to me when she knows that I am a short man?  How many Sabrina’s are there in the professional world?  What is their impact on our broad social goals to make our world more equitable for anyone willing to work hard and play by the rules? 

Need short men not apply?

Reader Submission: A Little Story From Brazil

TSC: Got this interesting e-mail from a friend of the blog from Brazil.  Slightly edited for content and context, and to eliminate potentially personal information.   

Hi Geoff,

 

I’m here to tell you another little story from Brazil.

 

A local news program showed the story of an Indian guy who was deceived by a Brazilian woman on Facebook. She used on her Facebook profile pictures of the Brazilian actress Giovanna Antonelli, none of her pictures were really her own.

 

The Indian guy (26 y.o.; single) showed several real pictures of him and used a webcam to show himself for the Brazilian woman (42 y.o.; divorced, mother of 2), that obviously said she didn’t have a webcam. Naively he believed her and in a crazy moment decided to leave Dubai (where he lives) and come to Brazil with just am one-way ticket and almost without any cash.

 

Once in Brazil, he learned that the Brazilian woman was not the beauty he thought she was. In fact, she is a mildly fat woman and probably not very pretty (in the video her face is not shown).

 

Well, it turns that she reject him, an obviously handsome guy….and why? She thought he was taller! He is just too short for this beauty queen….

 

You can see it on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh_dpd52nCM; from 0:43 to 0:57). Sorry, spoken in Portuguese and there are no subtitles.

 

I couldn’t tell you how many times I experienced (myself and through others) this same kind of story. Heightism is so deeply rooted that even a lying, unattractive woman feels free to reject a man just because he happens to be too short for her standards.

 

Regards,

Dan

Do short men really have rotten personalities? →

Unconscious Bias Against Short Men? →

TSC: One of the better discussions I’ve seen about heightism on the net.  This website, which is apparently devoted to men issues from a feminist perspective, published a post decrying the acceptance of heightism in our society.  The article is far from perfect because some aspects of hegihtism are trivialized in terms of impact and scope, but the opinion is fairly well reasoned.  Plus, the comments after the article are excellent.  A few people even rightly noticed that the title of the piece was biased in that heightism is hardly a “unconscious bias”.  Height bigotry is fairly blatant and accepted. 

Sociological Images brings us a video talking about implicit bias against short men. The scientifically valid tool discussed in the video, the Implicit Association Test, measures how biased someone is against a group, even in ways they may not know about:  if the test-taker is faster and more accurate at sorting tall men and good things into the same category than tall men and bad things, the test-taker is biased in favor of tall men.

The IATs have shown a systematic bias against short men– in fact, the scientist interviewed in the video compares the magnitude of the effect to that of race or ethnicity. Even more interestingly, this is almost entirely a subconscious bias. After all, outside of dating sites (in which women often request men 6′ or taller, partially so they can wear heels around their partner without feeling like they’re emasculating him, and isn’t that a rat’s nest of kyriarchy), very few people think about height as a gendered axis of oppression at all.

And don’t get me wrong: it is gendered. I would be very, very surprised if short women experienced the same bias that short men do. Height is, after all, a symbol of power: if you loom over someone, if you’re bigger than them, you appear more powerful than them  on a very primal level. In Western culture, we associate men with power, women with weakness. A short woman is merely doing what her gender requires (and may actually experience a larger dating pool and less worry about high-heel-induced castration complexes). A short man  is, in a certain way, failing as a man.

It’s also important to note that these biases are all subconscious. No one wakes up in the morning and says “fuck, man, short men are idiots and pussies, I fucking hate short men and am going to try to make them drink at their own water fountain.” There are very few anti-short-man hate groups. Even those portions of the Internet which have the primary function of stewing in their own grievances against every person who is not exactly like their readers usually only hate short men casually and in passing.

But for a lot of people, subconsciously, a tall man just seems… more imposing. More attractive. More like he knows what he’s doing. More charismatic. More of a leader. More of a man. All those little, intangible, gut-level things that can make the difference between a hiring or a promotion and a dead-end career or a night shift at Starbucks.

You can be racist, or sexist, or classist, or ableist, or even heightist without knowing it. You can appear to yourself like you don’t have a kyriarchal bone in your body and still perpetrate the kyriarchy without meaning to. The process of unlearning kyriarchal conditioning is just that– a lifelong process.  (This, incidentally, is why a lot of people support affirmative action. You’re already getting a leg up from all the subconscious biases people have, you might as well let the rest of us have a chance.)

Peter Manning - Five Eight/New York →

“Dedicated to creating classic American
sportswear for men 5’8” and under.
Every man deserves to look his best.”

TSC: You’ve got to check this out.  I will be ordering something very soon from them.  No more going to the tailor?  Where do I sign up?

EPIC heightism video (Repost)

TSC: Whether you are a proud short man, or simply a person who wants to learn about heightism; you should watch this video at least once. 

Bartolome Hates Heightism (but doesn’t expect tall people to understand… this is “above” them) →

TSC: One short man’s experiences with heightism.  Part of his story had me scratching my head, but I’m posting it because we should experience a diversity of opinions and thoughts related to this topic. 

Imagine that you are five inches shorter than you are. Wouldn’t make that much of a difference, would it? You wouldn’t think…

But then, you never did. You never thought. You don’t have to think. You’re not short, and you’ve never experienced Heightism. You’ve never been treated like a kid by other adults, never endured the so-called “gentle” chiding or the ceaseless self-consciousness at concerts and protests. You’ve never lived my life, never faced the assumptions, the constant applications of diminutive names… you have NO idea.

I used to pray (back when I believed in God and even long after I stopped praying, I still hoped) that one day I would be as tall as the average adult, but I was 16… 17… 18… at 21, I pretty much stopped growing. Well, now… I’m taller than most women I know, but I’m shorter than most other men, even men and BOYS much younger than myself and guess what. No one calls them “baby,” or “honey,” or “sweetie.” No… they get respect, not diminutive little cutesie nicknames. So fuck them and fuck the nicknamers, too.

Last summer I worked at a camp for autistic children. When we were transitioning the more severe kids onto the van to go to the pool twice a week, we would sometimes guide them with our hands onto the van. One day, as I was getting on the van, the lead counselor in the room I had been transferred to the previous week (this counselor and the other counselor in the Early Learners’ Room were bungling the job, so my supervisor, the camp director, put me in there to straighten them out since I worked with a lot of the same kids over the school year in the afterschool program) put her hand on MY back to guide ME onto the van. I said nothing at the time. I waited until one of our kids started tantruming violently on the van and attacking staff and peers; at that point, we turned around and I escorted the kid back in the building. My supervisor happened to be there and I told him about the incident, stating that “my personal space and dignity were violated”. He was pretty understanding about it. This lead counselor I mention, by the way, was taller than I was. She was a very unpleasant woman who would yell at me on the job until the day after the incident I just mentioned. I mentioned this to my boss as well. Then, the next day, I came to work a little early and confronted the lead counselor before the kids arrived. “You don’t get to touch me without my permission,” I told her. “You also don’t get to yell at me, especially not in front of the kids. It undermines my authority and creates a hostile work environment,”. She seemed pretty stunned, but accepted what I had said and apologized. It was a beautiful moment, a moment of power… in that moment I relished the power I held over her. It felt GOOD… .

(read the rest at the link)

TSC: I will say that the condescending attitudes are very common.  It happens to me also and so you’ve got to decide how to handle them on an individual basis. 

It’s most likely the case that the taller woman didn’t realize what she was doing when she used her hand to guide the author into the van like one of the children.  She probably never thought about her actions because they came naturally to her.  Often times, perfectly nice people will do things around short people that that they would never do around people their own height.  They often don’t even notice what they are doing.

That’s not to say that he should have just remained silent.  But, I don’t think anger is the answer in this situation either.  Yes, a lifetime of these sorts of incidents starts to add up, but you have to remember that everyone is an individual; unrelated to the many other individuals who have disrespected you in the past.  (And yes, I recognize that they don’t extend that same courtesy to us - they view us as a group - the next short person is like the last one, in a lot of their minds). 

The Most Interesting Thing I’ve Read Today

TSC: Found this comment in a dating discussion thread on loveshack.org.  It represents one short woman’s opinion as to why she is attracted to tall men but not short men.  Notice how she identifies social height prejudice, but essentially blames short people (men) for responding negatively to that prejudice.  This is what I mean by “the value judgement component” of heightism.  More discussion to follow.

  I am 5’2” woman and have never cared one bit about being short. Women don’t have the same short complex as men because most men are attracted are short women, so we don’t feel judged for our stature like many short men do. The only time I even really notice that I’m short is when I need a man to reach the top shelves. If I could make myself taller, I wouldn’t.

I have always preferred tall guys and my husband is almost a foot taller than me. I can’t really explain the attraction, but suspect it has to do with some primal need to feel safe and protected. I understand that short men can be strong and I could’ve found a 5’5” Bruce Lee type to be with, but that’s not the same. Most bodyguards & bouncers are big men, so even though many smaller men can offer protection if needed, a bigger man has an imposing presence. Other men are much less likely to challenge a 6’2” 250 pounder than a 5’8” 160 pounder, in my opinion.

There is also a status thing that I have noticed between men. It seems that taller men often get more respect and consideration from other men. It could be my imagination, but that is what I have noticed. If other women pick up on this too, it could make shorter men seem inferior. It also seems that some short men are insecure about it, and insecurity is a turn off. It seems that taller men have it easier in many aspects of life, not just dating. It’s not fair, but that’s just the way it is.

The way I think it could be overcompensating is because if you are a short woman, you may not want to chance that your sons will be burdened with insecurity or inferiority complexes because they inherited your shortness. I love my kids no matter what their height, but I don’t want them to have a hard time. Knowing this, choosing a tall man would make it more likely that a shorter woman will have taller sons. So this is the only way I may be overcompensating for my own shortness. It’s probably some primal instinct that prompts these feelings, and a short woman’s preference for tall men may be them unconsciously trying to make the next generation healther & stronger.

We can logically know, in this day and age, that we don’t need protection, and that short men are just as healthy and strong. But that knowledge does not always negate our primal attraction, IMO.

I chose what was best for me and what was most attractive to me. I don’t think I should’ve had to consider the plight of short men when choosing my mate.

TSC:  Heightism is a socially constructed prejudice, based on gender norms, which holds that human height should convey social privilege or stigma.  And as all of my regular readers know, the mechanism which promulgates heightism consists of three components.  They are (1) Hegemonic Masculinity (height as an embodiment of masculinity), (2) Gender Norms (height conflated with gender), and (3) The Value Judgement (that height SHOULD convey stigma/privilege).   

Here we have an excellent example of the value judgment component of heightism via a “blame the victim” rhetorical formulation.  On the one hand, the commentator concedes that short men are subject to social stigma (“It seems that taller men often get more respect and consideration from other men”), but on the other hand she blames short men for “lacking confidence” or having a “complex” (“It also seems that some short men are insecure about it, and insecurity is a turn off”). 

Notice that the perpetrators of height bigotry are never chastised for their behavior; only the victims of the prejudice are blamed for not happily accepting disparate treatment (“you may not want to chance that your sons will be burdened with insecurity or inferiority complexes”).  Oddly, it seems that the commenter is completely unconcerned that her imaginary short son might face height bigotry.  Instead, she seems to be mainly concerned with the prospect that he might develop an inferiority complex based on his treatment.  This strange formulation probably develops because the speaker cannot bring herself to blame the perpetrators of heightism - often those who benefit from the social privilege (like the men whom she so admires) - and so she imputes a supposed “complex” onto the victim (even though such a complex would merely be a byproduct of the actual stigma).     

Also notice that the commentator doesn’t merely say that short men are discriminated against; she says that short men SHOULD be discriminated against.  She implies that the stigma is natural (“primal need” and “primal instinct”) as well as immutable (“that’s just the way it is”).

And then, at the end of her commentary, she says (without a hint of irony) “I don’t think I should’ve had to consider the plight of short men when choosing my mate.“  Judging by her misguided but well-thought-out philosophy on the subject; it seems that this is a lie.  Clearly she did consider the plight of short men when she chose her husband.  She even said as much.  After all, she wouldn’t want to take the chance of having a short son son with a height complex - right?

Isn’t heightism fun?

(Edit to add): Romantic attraction is not heightism, but heightism can affect attraction.  Plus, analyzing the inner dialogue and the context in which people make these decisions can tell us interesting things about the nature and severity of this social stigma.