UP THE SHORTS
Don’t be misled by the title, this isn’t about the best way to finger your girlfriend in public. It’s about a subject even fewer Americans like to talk about: Heightism. For going on a century, we progressive-minded folk have fought to raise awareness and help upend the slings and arrows borne by the minorities of our society over the most frivolous of differentiating traits — what color their skin is, the shape of their eyes, whether or not they have a cunt, and whether or not they like to fuck people who have or don’t have a cunt (depending on whether or not they have a cunt). The time has come to mount our high horses and direct their judicious gallop at the most insidious form of bigotry of them all, anti-short bias.
Since man first sharpened stick to fell the great mammoth, short men have drawn the eponymous end of said stick. Hardly a day passes in the life of a Short-American in which they aren’t passed over in some arena for a taller and often less-deserving candidate: employment, friendship, fraternity membership, team athletics. And romance? Don’t even get me started. My girlfriend is a matchmaker who works with female clients (a rarity in the field) and one of her favorite psychological tricks is asking her gals for every additional $500k of income per inch, how much shorter of a man are they willing to date. It’s like Sophie’s Choice. The average woman can’t even conceive of being sexually attracted to someone of sub-average height — even the short women. Fuck, ESPECIALLY the short women. They’re all fucking height traitors. And what’s even sicker is they each disclose their repugnant prejudice as if it’s a personal quirk unique to them. “I just have this weird thing where I only like guys who are 6-foot-1 or taller.” Yeah, it’s called bigotry, you fucking tallophile.
Tall supremacy is engrained in every aspect of our society, from our language (“that’s a tall order” “don’t get short with me”) to the design of our public transportation handrails and our restrooms (one short urinal for every four talls, IF there even is one) to the cuts of our clothing. Think for a moment how many “Big & Tall” stores you’ve encountered and compare that with the number of “Short & Slender” retailers.
The short man learns his place at an early age, from the mocking grin of the fiberglass amusement park mascot holding his flattened hand or paw at a tantalizing, unreachable vertical remove and informing him “You must be this tall in order to ride.” Must, as if not achieving adequate height is a personal failing, an obligation seditiously unfulfilled, and not a cruel quirk of nature. The short man is blamed for his benighted stature and feared. To diagnose a person with “short man’s syndrome” is to identify him as both an object of mockery and threat, pathologized soley by the distance of his head from the floor. “Napoleon Complex” is even worse. Here we have taken the most feared and admired ruler of the 19th century — a military tactician of such unmitigated genius he was only defeated by nature itself — and made him a squeaky-voiced mental patient dwarfed by his own hat. Tall apologists love to point out how Napoleon wasn’t actually short but of average height for a Frenchman of his time, his undersized reputation stemming from a combination of English propaganda and a discrepancy in British and Continental standards of measure. As if the tall community didn’t already have enough historical figures to look up to (or at even eyeline with) they had to take ours too.
That’s what Talls do; they take. They just take and take. They construct shelves only they can reach and that’s where they keep objects of worth. Have you ever wondered why the expensive liquor is on the “top shelf?” To keep it out of the hands of the short men they resent and covertly loathe. To restrict access to those they choose. “Here, let me get that for you.” Is there any more condescending declaration of control? If tall men had their way, there would be no lower shelves, no “well” for communal refreshment, not for liquor not for anything. The short world would be entirely dependent on their gropey, ape-like arms for all of our needs. They’ve already managed to sequester our lighting and ventilation to heights outside our naked reach. What’s next, refrigerators you need a ladder to open? Medicine kits you have to be 6”4’ to utilize? For “child safety precautions”? Make no mistake, when Talls talk about safeguarding children they are referring to YOU, fellow Shorts. There is no difference in their eyes. Height = age, height = worth. You’re not a statistical outlier to them, not even an unhappy mistake of rogue genetics. You are an abomination, as grave an existential threat as Bartleby to the workaholic Victorians. In their twisted, privileged minds you weren’t born to a lesser height, you refused to grow. What else could explain it? After all, they grew to their proper height with seemingly no effort of their own. It just happened. For you to have failed at achieving Tallness you must have actively done something wrong. Something perverse and blasphemous. Your subaltern altitude is to them the Mark of Cain and they would like nothing more than to drive your unTall frame from the face of the Earth.
But not if we beat them to it.
Don’t mistake what I mean here. I’m not out to kill the Talls, not so much for their sake as for simple logistics. Who’s gonna do all that murdering, Shorts? I wouldn’t want to put my undersized brethren through that trauma. Nor that mess: Imagine dragging all those tall-ass corpses to the cremation grounds. You’d need at least two Shorts for every dead Tall. It’s just not practical. To say nothing of the effect that directing a full-scale Tallocaust would have on my reputation. You don’t see a lot of parents naming their kids Adolf or Slobodan if you haven’t noticed — not even their dogs. Slaughtering all the tall men in our society simply isn’t politically expedient. That’s why I want to sterilize them.
Just think how much less crime we’d have if we took every man over 5’“5” and pumped them full of estrogen. Maybe this is more of a correlative effect, like if you took the same number of men and chemically feminized them regardless of height you’d have the same outcome, but I don’t care. They’ve had it coming. Let those fuckers grow tits. And let us all reap the rewards.
Imagine a world run by short men. A world where lost balloons are not held hostage by ludicrously high ceilings. A world where carseats need not be slid into their farthest forward position. A world where deli counters and pharmacy pick-up windows can be seen over without having to go on point. A world where a man’s character and sexual worthiness are judged by the contents of his mind and wallet, not two numbers on his license.
Far too long have we rallied at moments of pernicious Tall obstruction to the cry, “Down in front!” Those days of defensive solidarity must come to an end, my short brothers. If Talls will not stand down (or in back where they belong) then I say “up the shorts!” A short world today, for our children and ourselves. It’s within our reach.
Originally written October 2017, presumably pretty late.
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Hey, Thomas again. If you want to stay current on my old writings (and new ones if I ever get around to it), follow me on twitter (@babyballs69) and/or Instagram (just @babyballs) and I’ll keep you posted with what gets posted. Crap. Sorry, that was pretty lousy. Anyways, I’m also running this patreon too — don’t let appearances fool you! — if you wanna help out with the coffers round here.
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