I don’t think it’s odd at all - most women are not attracted to men shorter than themselves.It’s not the same as saying I wouldn’t have dated a short man - in fact, I said I would’ve dated a short man, just not one shorter than me. I don’t know that I’d call it discrimination - I never went out with a blond, is that discrimination?
In the olden days, young men would have gotten dating advice from older men, like their dad or uncle or coach. They’d be able to tell the story of why they’re confused and frustrated and some older guy would give them some clarity. Doesn’t this happen any more? Or was it always a myth?
I don’t think all men do. But I do think that some men do.
I am in the USA; and I’ve been to potluck wedding celebrations held in a friend’s house.
But expectations do vary widely; and there certainly are people who’d be massively embarrassed to do something like that.
Certainly some aren’t, especially if that’s all they know about them. But I’m not at all sure that it’s “most”. I think the common size differences are driven at least as much by men being unwilling to date women taller than themselves; and are partially caused just by men, on average, being taller than women.
I think it probably always happened that sometimes they got good advice that way and sometimes they got bad advice that way.
Whether young men now are on average less likely to talk with their relatives or coaches about such things than they used to be I have no idea.
I don’t think I’ve met any adult men who are shorter than me who weren’t dwarfs or something.
I wonder if there isn’t more to this story than you know. Suppose it had happened as was described to you later; she expressed an interest in you, and you turned her down. That sucks for both parties, but it doesn’t really justify you being ostracized from the friend group on the spot. Makes me think she said something once she was inside that cast you in a much more negative light than just not interested.
Conversely, if you asked her out (as you, in fact, did) and she’d turned you down, would she have been instantly asked to leave?
The other thing I find interesting about these sorts of stories is how one-sided the blame seems to be. In both cases, you had women who were interested in you, and you didn’t notice. But, neither of them picked up signals from you, either. That shouldn’t make it automatically your fault.
I’m glad it worked out in the end.
Welcome back.
OMG, I just flashed back to a very old Disney (?) movie that I think was actually called The Horse Masters. It was probably from the the late 60s and starred Annette Funicello, and all I can remember is that she sang a song using the tune of the Funicula song. The chorus was “he’s the dreamy dreamboat dreamy dreamboat meant for me.” The school was set in England, so the movie was probably based on the same school.
It was (and possibly still is) a real school in England. It trained a person in all aspects of managing horses including riding. There was a fiction book about it called The Horsemasters, on which the film was loosely based. But the book was about a real and well-known government funded school. A certificate from it would get you a good job back when there were good jobs in the horse business. It didn’t teach saddle seat, which is an American specialty, but jumping and dressage.
I may just be wrong about the saddle seat. That definitely sounds like the place. And it’s possible I couldn’t find a link to or about it because I kept coming up with hits about the movie.
I don’t think the school was in any way about finding one’s dreamboat, though I suppose it might have occasionally happened. I’m disappointed but not surprised if that’s what Disney made of it.
Well, that’s one of the structural problems with toxic masculinity as a societal norm. Being able to “get” a woman (in particular, a woman who meets conventional standards of attractiveness and desirability) is traditionally considered one of the core metrics of manliness. “Real men” are routinely defined by criteria that include being socially and sexually successful.
Consequently, a man expressing frustration and pain about his lack of romantic and sexual success comes across kind of like an aspiring soccer player expressing frustration that the ball won’t travel more than three feet when he kicks it. The typical conditioned reaction, from men and women alike, is going to be something along the lines of “what a failure and loser you must be, not to be able to accomplish this crucial thing that more or less defines basic adequacy for your role!”
If we want to fix that problem, we need to tackle the entrenched presence of toxic masculinity in societal expectations. As a society, we need to stop trying to find face-saving excuses for young men who aren’t romantically successful, and we need to stop blaming and shaming women because they’re no longer making it a top priority to nurture and serve men’s desire to be romantically successful.
Instead, we need to get to the root of the whole issue and make it clear to all of us that romantic success is not something that men are obligated to have in order to be acceptably “manly”, and not something that men are automatically entitled to simply because they’re men. If a man isn’t very successful at dating, that’s no more an indictment of his worth as a person than if he’s not very successful at singing or driving or mental arithmetic. It doesn’t automatically make him a “loser”.
Achieving that realization won’t magically eliminate all relationship and dating problems, but at least it will re-emphasize the fact that relationships and dating are about individual personal choices, not about some kind of universal qualifying exam for basic social acceptability.
I have read observations of this general issue, where it’s advocated that the word “toxic” be eliminated and replaced with more accurate adjectives such as “immature,” or “dysfunctional,” or “defeatist,” etc., as might more accurately apply.
Welcome back. And that’s a very interesting post, but too long for me to digest all at once. Please don’t take my lack of response to the details to mean that i am not seriously engaging with it.
And, again, all of these things have a huge amount to do with societal conditioning. Many people sincerely feel that they’re “just not attracted to” men shorter than themselves, or women taller than themselves, or men who weigh less than they do, or women who weigh more than they do, or a man who’s younger or a woman who’s older, or whatever. But those feelings, as sincere as they may be, are rarely completely independent of societal norms and our unconscious absorption of them. (For one thing, women have it really drummed into them that it’s unattractive and unfeminine to be “too big”, both in weight and in height. Being with a man who’s bigger than they are gives them a sense of safety from the insecurity of possibly being “too big”.)
These expectations can come out in really weird ways. Personally, I never felt I understood the typical female reluctance to date short (or even shorter) men, and never had difficulty finding short guys attractive (including youthful celebrity crushes on the 5-foot-ish comedian Ronnie Corbett and politician Robert Reich).
But when I watched the 6’2" soprano Lise Davidsen singing the title role in Tosca opposite the 5’10"-ish tenor Freddie de Tommaso, it kept feeling slightly “off” to me somehow. There’s no rational reason Tosca can’t have a lover who’s shorter than she is! but it just wasn’t what I was conditioned to expect.
That suggestion makes sense, just from a marketing perspective. “Toxic” is an emphasis on how it harms others, blaming these men for harm, they feel unfairly. “Dysfunctional” and “defeatist” puts the emphasis on the harm it does to themselves, possibly of more concern to address…
I’ve never seen the movie, but the book had a romance in it. It was between the two best riders, who loathed each other and competed against each other until the dramatic last chapter in which figured a horse who refused to be ridden. In the book, the school was really the protagonist, and adventures of the various people enrolled in it were sidelights. Disney spoils all the books it ‘dramatizes’, even rather mediocre ones like The Horsemasters.
Well, we definitely shouldn’t be calling individual people “toxic” just because they’ve absorbed some of these pervasive sexist prejudices without meaning to. And I don’t have a problem with renaming the whole concept of “toxic masculinity” to some other term that more people would find more descriptive, or less triggering, or whatever.
But I do think the term “toxic masculinity” has value in the notion it conveys of how such rigid and demanding conventions of maleness are actually poisoning social interactions. As well as poisoning the thoughts and feelings of individuals who feel humiliated by their own perceived inability to meet those “manliness” criteria, but unable to reject or critique them.
Fundamentally I have to agree, since, for whatever reason, one day long ago during a long walk in the woods I realized that there are no such things as gendered virtues.
But I wonder if the obverse it therefore not also true: there are no gendered vices. As a matter of biology men are bigger than women and able to inflict more damage. But as beings complex beyond body mass, that hardly covers everything.
And I say this as someone who’s father inflicted all his own frustrations upon me, who was targeted by mostly male (but also, fewer though more penetrating female bullies) in middle school as a fag, was sexually assaulted by a male and who now shares his life with a woman whose external clitoris was burned to a nub of scar by a stalker boyfriend years ago. I’m no stranger to the shitty side of male behavior.
But I still push back on a model of the human race that holds the male half in one bucket and the female half in another, and maintains that there’s a dollop of toxic shit stirred into the male.
How about we separate the bad people from the good, based on their actions, not their sex? As a lapsed Catholic I’ve had my fill of original sin jammed down my throat, thank you.
That may be part of it, but I don’t think it’s most of it. Forget all the cultural messages and societal expectations. I don’t give a tinker’s damn what most people think of me, but I’d still like to fall in love; requited, if possible.
A few years ago, I asked one of my younger coworkers if men primarily asked women out via text. She said that was her experience, and I jokingly told her when I was her age a woman had to look me in the eyes when she broke my heart. When it comes to pitching woo and courtship, I feel as though things are very, very different from what they were even in 2000. If I had a fifteen or sixteen year old kid who was starting to date, I’m not sure what useful advice I could give them beyond making sure they treat their partners and are treated with respect, don’t pressure them to do anything they’re not comfortable doing, use protection because I’m too young to be a grandpa, etc., etc.
Sure, but I strongly disagree that “all the cultural messages and societal expectations” are playing a minor role here. Maybe for you personally they are, but I think a lot of people are pretty sensitive to cultural messages and societal expectations. Especially when they center around the issue of what counts as adequately masculine or feminine.
Seems like we are at the tipping point (Malcolm Gladwell) where women are the ones with the money/education/power and have to start asking the lower class men out. Will the men rise up and start taking care of the household and children?