Yep. Nobody wants to talk about it, but the amount of abuse that is directed from otherwise-socially-conscious women towards short men is pretty disgusting. It's extremely common for groups of women to laugh at and deride short men, both online and publicly in real life. It's eye-opening. (And before you ask, no I am not short, I've just witnessed the abuse first hand).
100%, but you're right that nobody wants to talk about it. I guess I've just adapted by growing thick skin around the issue and just not letting it bother me.
That thick skin is, IMHO, a trait that I think has become vastly underappreciated in our society.
Thick skin doesn’t solve the issue though. Shorter men are valued less in society regardless of how little you let it effect you emotionally. This has real tangible effects for your everyday experience.
Being made fun of and the source of jokes is never going to be solved by having “thick skin”. Shorter men will still be seen as lesser even if they don’t let it effect them mentally. End of the day - your material being will be markedly different than those with greater height regardless of how you respond to it. For some - this will be so severe that they will likely die alone due to it even though they themselves are not troubled by their height or the jokes people make about them. And honestly - letting it get to you might actually help.
Sometimes I wish I had been more insecure growing up because then I would’ve treated my acne and not had all the facial scarring. I almost didn’t get braces because I didn’t see the issue with my extremely British teeth. I wasn’t concerned about my attire (but I should have been!) because I didn’t think it mattered and I wasn’t concerned. Again - thick skin can actually be quite detrimental to your outcomes!
This happens more often then you think. I’ve seen basically every minority group imaginable get told to develop thick skin and get over their “imaginary problems” (black, asian, indian, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, asexual, straight, poor, rich etc), even on more liberal corners of the internet.
I don't think you're wrong to point this out, but it's also obvious that nobody is discriminating against men for being short or women for being fat the way people discriminate and have discriminated against people for being members of those groups.
I don't recall any red-lining against short men, separate water fountains or schools for short men, short-men not being allowed to get married, etc. Also, remind me the next time the NYPD sets up some extremely questionable surveillance of short-men at northeastern universities or a presidential candidate adopts banning foreign short-men from the country as part of his campaign platform.
Didn't see any study about that, but its true that women not only reject unfit men (short, poor, etc.) but sometimes are actively hostile and abusive to them. Perhaps is a instinctive behavior from a past were rapes were much more common than today.
Almost all "socially conscious" people are just pretending so they fit in.
Only ~10% of people have actual social consciousness that affects their life choices.
Personally, the short men I know still get play. Women have a wide variety of tastes, as do men; and the taste really just needs to be tried once to get a probability for it to stick.
That said, women being callous and cruel in groups about height, fitness, etc is more congruent to locker room talk. You probably won't hear it because it's behind your back and usually not by people you know. I say that as having been witness to this kind of private talk before.
Yeah. My point about promiscuity is that it hasn't hindered my dating ability. I agree with the locker room talk but I disagree that it's a problem. And it's not just women. If anything I've had my stature shit talked more often by other men.
I was just summarizing why I think you probably wouldn't hear it directly from women. Men definitely do it too, but as you said, probably in a more noticeable/direct fashion. That said, after years of social movements that have made very targeted complaints using identity, I would not cast that kind of stone. Trying to use shitty data and anecdotes to declare, "Men/women are problematic because of x" is really not helpful. Really, at the end of the day, nobody on this planet has any business commenting on someone's features they were born with. It's easy enough to stick to that.
We'd be in a better place if we started from the assumption that everybody is prejudiced, it takes work for any of us to overcome it, and the work is never complete.
I've seen hypocrisy and cruelty from people of all backgrounds. But anecdotally, among the "socially conscious women" I've spent time around, this, which is one of three top comments on the article, is a common sentiment:
> This is a reminder that the patriarchy hurts everyone and men should be just as invested in destroying it as women.
Thinking about this more, I think the far simpler explanation is "being a mean piece of shit hurts everyone" and it applies to pretty much any belief system and doesn't require a complete restructuring of society on the hopes that it'll prevent people from being mean.
It's an example of the harms that emerge from hidebound gender roles, preconceptions about the desirability of male dominance and female submission, and stultified ideals of attractiveness.
Just as women benefit when society learns to accept and appreciate a wider variety of body types, so do men.
Doesn't this only make sense though if patriarchy is a priori defined by gender roles? It falls apart if any non-patriarchal system develops or prefers any gender roles. On what basis is it claimed that only a patriarchy has gender roles?
You are talking about “a patriarchy”, they are talking about “the patriarchy”. In other words this particular one we are living in with it’s built in assumed gender roles.
I understand, I am asking why the gender roles being "built in" is exclusive to patriarchy. Suppose we replace patriarchy with matriarchy. Are there no built in assumptions about gender and everyone treats each other nicely?
> I aspire to a society where gender expression is independent from societal roles.
Brilliant. We're all in this together struggling to be generous to each other. There will always be tension between men and women and divergent gender roles will always exist, but things can be better than they are today.
There can be less of people of one gender or another demeaning others for physical characteristics, and more celebration of variety. I hope that more people can find it in themselves to accept when an olive branch is held out to them. This huge thread with hundreds of comments is a catalog of anguish showing how much potential there is for us to do better and be better — in daenz's formulation, being less of a "mean piece of shit" — for each other.
I believe it's an emergent phenomenon, so unless there is a plan to enforce that from emerging, you're going to be very unsatisfied even if "the patriarchy" is removed. But my question that I want to understand is, are "gender roles" by definition a patriarchal concept? If so, "the patriarchy" will always be a boogeyman to blame any time gender roles emerge. If not, then tying them to patriarchy is dishonest.
I would guess that both monogamy and historical gender roles derive from the economics of an agricultural society. We had thousands of years where almost all people were agriculturalists. It’s only within the last hundred or so that we have large numbers of people no longer closely tied to agriculture. I expect both expected gender roles and our societal concept of marriage to undergo profound changes.
That's not true though. It's women who believe in patriarchal gender roles that are more likely to date short men, because they focus on a man's suitability as a potential provider rather than his looks.
