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There's definitely a weird and creepy bias against short men (for a fun time, check out twitter.com/heightismxposed and gawk at people who are literally saying that any guy who's under some arbitrary benchmark is subhuman and should kill himself), but as somebody who's a foot shorter than you, I will happily jump in and say that reclining seats on an airline is not part of the War on Short Men; this dude is just crazy and bitter.


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I'm above the 95th percentile in male height, and have never experienced contempt from short men. Must be friendly.

I'm also below the 99th percentile, which is where most of what you describe starts to kick in.

Lucky me, I guess. I do have to put up with my knees pressing into the back of airplane seats...


> According to a 2009 study of Australian men, short guys make less money than their taller peers (about $500 a year per inch); are less likely to climb the corporate ladder (according to one survey, the average height of a male Fortune 500 CEO is six feet); and, for the cis and straight among us, have fewer romantic opportunities with women (a 2013 study conducted in the Netherlands found that women were taller than their male partners in just 7.5 percent of cases). I’m five six on a good day, and I’ve found that being short is great for flying economy class—and not much else.

Unbelievable :(


Isn't this another discrimination that short men face? They cannot even engage in a conversation without getting an ad hominem attack. Think napoleon complex.

I'm tall and this is biased against tall people.

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).

> This might be an unpopular opinion here, but..

Why?

I agree, I'm above average in height (but not super top 5% tall)

Also most airlines I use allow to pay extra for more leg room but I don't, prefer to save a buck.

It sucks if you're tall in this case, but there are benefits to being tall, like higher wages, higher IQ, larger dating pool.


All these guys in here talking about the extreme discrimination against short men, where is this occurring? I say this as someone who is 5"7.

I thought it was a meme on Tinder that incels blew out of proportion, but apparently it's bigger?


I said nothing about things being “designed with a bias in favor of tall people.'

Tall people earn significantly more on average. Asking short people to underwrite tall people's airfare does not seem fair given that fact.


As a short person this sounds like genocide.

I don't know if that's the issue people are bringing. I think people are talking about the active derogatory and communicated bias towards shorter men.

Not being attracted to short men and not wanting to reproduce with them is a personal thing. But going on record ridiculing them, saying bad things about them, mocking their height, that's not okay, and it's true that if it was done about their race it would be frowned upon, but seems to be acceptable for height.

I think that's a fair issue to bring up.

It also seems there might be real measurable pay-gaps, and that might need addressing as well.


Unable to buy pants, kitchens and bathrooms are too short so cooking and washing dishes are back-aching activities. Economy seating in airplanes is almost impossible. Vacuum cleaner handle not long enough. Few car brands have seats that go back far enough.

It’s very hard to buy a bicycle.

Nothing terrible, just annoyances. No big deal compared to dumb social prejudice against shorter men.


I'm 196cm and airplanes are actually not as bad as fellow tall people always complain. I think I might have relatively short legs for my height.

Height is a two-edged sword.

Tall people have some advantages over short people. Short people have a few advantages, too. Plane legroom is one of them.


They’re burying the lede on this story.

This guy runs an OnlyFans where he gets paid to dominate other men. He psychologically wants to be taller because he doesn’t feel like his (completely unremarkable) height is appropriately dominating.


I generally agree with everything you're saying here, but I don't think that there's any sort of exceptional hate directed towards short men at this point in time, nor do I think that it's women being attracted to tall men is a fad/meme.

For folks in this thread making statements such as, "I don't see how one can dictate to others what they should find attractive," the negative social stigmas towards men of short stature go far beyond physical attraction. (There's absolutely nothing wrong with women finding taller men attractive.)

https://twitter.com/heightismxposed

Swap "short guy" for "Jew" in the quotations from those twits that have nothing to do with attraction:

> I feel sorta bad, but when short guys talk to me all I can think is "wow, what is this miniature dude even saying?"

> cute short guys are waste of space and life tbh

> I don't take short guys serious at all.

> Ugly, short men kill yourselves!

> I can't respect short guys especially if we're the same eye level, I feel like I can beat you up lol

> Men under 5 feet 9 arent really men.

> There's too many short guys in the world

Hopefully the problem is apparent. (The first quote I listed is by a man, AFAICT.)


I'm much shorter. Planes cost per pound to fly in the end.

Why should I pay more to subsidise your flight just because of how I was born?

Equality? Sounds like another blatant example of tall privilege to me.


The comment you pointed to seems very reasonable to me, I am assuming from the rest of your comment that you don't think it is.

We all have such realities, and typically few if any other people realise what's going on. Just be kind. To everyone (note to self: be better at this).

It's not specific to any particular group (though: apparently short men have it quite a bit worse than other "protected" groups: http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/height_discrimi... )


The comments above are focusing on dating (and in particular, on dating sites), but that's not really what the article is about. The people in the article have complaints beyond dating:

> colleagues constantly made remarks about his stature. “I was not treated with respect,” Scott told me. “At every single workplace I’ve been in, there've been several situations where people commented on my height to discredit me entirely as a person.”

> For Scott, demeaning comments about height are everywhere — whether in his personal life or in pop culture. He singled out TikTok particularly, where jokes about men’s height are rampant.

> I asked Westrich to describe the most common experiences that patients shared with her. “One [complaint] I hear quite often is ‘I don’t get the same respect as others. I’ve accomplished so much and I’m still often treated like a child.’”

> ... “I would still go on the internet and see ‘Men below this height shouldn’t have rights.’”

People should of course be free to date who they want, but not to harass, mock, demean, or disrespect people for being short.

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