Having followed a link to another thread, I got sucked in and eventually ended up reading this one. I thought I would add my two penn'orth as a shortarsed bloke.
I'm not offended if someone doesn't fancy short men. We are attracted to who we are attracted to. It's not a conscious choice. It's partly culture and partly biology. May as well be offended that the sun rises in the morning.
For the parents worried about their short boys - I wouldn't fret. They'll be OK. There probably will be a significant proportion of the female population who don't find them attractive for that reason - well, so what? How many women will they meet in a lifetime, and of those what proportion do they need to fancy them? It may make things a little harder, particularly when they are younger (I think because it makes them appear younger), it may rule out some relationships which would otherwise be perfectly matched, but them's the breaks. There are roughly equal numbers of men and women, they eventually form long term relationships, those left single reassess their priorities and pair up. The important thing - actually for any young man - is to know that whether or not someone else wants to sleep with them is a terrible basis for a person's self esteem. Nobody is entitled to a relationship, but most people do eventually want a family life, whether that's just as a couple or with kids, and as a result most people do eventually get it.
As for OLD - well, I tried it recently, in my forties, and had got the impression from what I'd read that I'd be immediately filtered out (I'm 5'6 and didn't lie - what's the point?). That hasn't been my experience. I've not been single since my twenties, but something has changed since then. Perhaps OLD is just more efficient at putting people together. Perhaps I come across better in text than stood at a bar. Perhaps my face looks less like a melted welly than it used to (unlikely). Perhaps women my age have different priorities than they did 20 years ago, or all the tall dateable guys are taken or chasing women 20 years their junior. Whatever. Doesn't matter. There has been absolutely no shortage of women choosing to make contact. They're my age +/- 6 years or so, they mostly have kids, they're mostly 5'7 or shorter. And that's all fine by me. I'm not looking for hook-ups (it's not that kind of dating site) so it takes some time and effort to get to know people and like everyone else my free time is limited. No doubt I am being filtered out by many because of my height, but it's really no skin off my nose. They like what they like, and I hope they find it. Meanwhile, I'll find someone who likes me - in fact I think I already have.