Gordaen's Blog

Recently, I’ve posted a bit about feminism due to my Women’s Studies course. The books we’ve read had some pieces of good piled under huge anti-white-male sentiment. Apparently, we live in “whiteboyworld” (one of the essays actually used that “word”). One of the essays claimed that all medical problems that doctors tie to obesity are caused by large people trying various diets instead of by fat or cholesterol or anything that would make sense (I’m not saying that diets can’t cause problems, only that being overweight causes problems whether you “diet” or not).

Anyway, the point today isn’t really about racism or sexism, but it is instead about a much more overt form of discrimination. In fact, it is so common, we simply acknowledge it without thinking twice. I’m talking about heightism.

Just like with racism there is a norm (for racism it is “white”) and two extremes (for racism that would be “transparent” and “black” and for heightism the extremes are tall and short… crazy concept, I know).

Doors are generally seven or eight feet tall, forcing the extra tall people to stoop. The tallest man in history was 8′ 11″ and I’m sure he didn’t appreciate that everything was made for people of “normal” height. I’m only 5′ 9″ or so and my head is just a few inches from the t-tops in my car. If I were much over six feet, I’d have to buy a different car! Specially made shoes can cost hundreds of dollars. Tall people bang their knees against handlebars on bicycles.

On the opposite side are shorter people. They have to aim up for urinals and get screwed at movie theaters. They have to suffer shopping in the children’s or young adults’ sections of clothing stores. They can’t see over the steering wheel of cars, so they just play bumper cars on actual roads, earning a bad reputation. They can’t reach the top shelves and constantly have to look up.

Damn you world! You’re so cruel to the abnormally sized! I did some research to find out it I could positively impact this terrible injustice and I found a Wikipedia article that explained how hard heightism is on women. Oh yeah, like any kind of “ism,” it just barely affects males, since we’re so privileged…

Fortunately, you can add anything you want to Wikipedia, so I added some info about how guys are discriminated against for being too tall and too short.

If you really think about it, I bet you can find far more ways in which our society discriminates against people of “abnormal” heights than against people of specific races. Yet, heightism is largely ignored unless being used for comedic value. Since feminism seems to be the anti-discrimination movement, I thought I would point out an interesting fact:

In the U.S., about 7% of women between 4′ 10″ and 5′ 6″ are will[ing to] choose a shorter man [to date].

Looking at the data, we see that the majority of women below six feet tall will not date a shorter man. The majority of women below 5′ 10″ will not date a man of equal height either.

The lesson you should have learned: Discrimination against men because of their height is okay. Discrimination against women for any reason is not okay.