Blackadder star Tony Robinson vents anger over ‘heightism’

[Valeriekat]

In the Guardian
Another man who doesn't seem to think that women get to choose!
I don't suppose he has similar scruples about "uglyism" or even ageism.

i read it more that he was commenting on societies derision of short men rather than specifically dating apps.
separately, I’m not on dating apps; can people filter for size? Can men for example specify no women over 125kg or no one with a BMI over 25?

Everyone gets to choose. Forced dating isn't a thing in the UK for either sex. Yet at least.

Tony prefers younger women.

His wife is younger than his daughter

I once met someone who had worked with him on one his historical type programmes. Apparently, he is very unpleasant and a complete diva.

It probably depends on what app you use but I've never seen a weight filter on Tinder or Bumble. I've never been asked to input my weight or BMI by a dating app either. I guess some would argue that you can estimate weight from a photo but not height. I wouldn't rely on people being truthful about their weight either when it's self-reported.

The derision you see about short men on this site and in society is bloody horrible.
People should not be mocked for physical attributes they have not control over, no matter what that physical attribute is or what sex they are.

You should be able to filter on body type and weight. Also an AI generated number of attractiveness.

Making a such a big deal about height seems to be new thing. And not actually apparent IRL

We have several men in our friendship group who are below average height, they all have wives and never struggled for girlfriends.

In my DCs circle of friends there are some shorter boys, again, it doesn't seem to hold any of them back finding girlfriends.

There's only one quote from Tony Robinson in that article. It looks like it's been written to promote the Elizabeth Day podcast, and Tony is just clickbait in the headline.

"Nowadays, you don’t pick on people’s looks, do you? It’s like kind of a new understanding over the last 10 or 15 years, you don’t deride people for what they look like,” is his quote. What planet is he living on? People are.derided for their looks all the time.

Tony's right that heightism is wrong, but he can get in line with fat people, thin people, old people, ugly people, people who've had obvious cosmetic surgery ... all of whom the media and society are ready to take a pop at, sadly.

A relative came across him when walking her dog. He was rude and unpleasant; actually used the phrase “Do you know who I am?”
Relative gave him very short shrift. (No pun intended)

Speaking as a tall woman, I’ve never found that men shorter than I am have particularly wanted to date me. Quite the opposite - they look for women shorter than them.

Should I have complained about “heightism?”

He does seem to think that this is the last remaining prejudice and sounds very bitter at women in particular

“There is a blind spot about men’s height, and the shorter blokes here will understand exactly what I mean, you kind of don’t want to talk about it because what are you going to get back when you say that?

“But you look at Love Island, every woman who is asked what bloke they want will always start by saying ‘I want a tall man’ and then everyone else will laugh in collusion...

“[There’s] smart women who wouldn’t pick out the fact that they didn’t want, I don’t know, to be married with a red-haired man or a Jew or a blind person or anything else will laugh with their friends and say ‘oh God, he’s got to be taller than me’.

“It really p- me off to be honest. My wife said ‘don’t get cross when you talk about this’.”

https://archive.ph/KyqA0

Certain women seem to feel very strongly about height. If it was men putting as much attention on a single female attribute (e.g. "I won't date women with small breasts in any circumstances") we'd be calling it out. Doubtless a fair number of men do think like this (e.g. "I won't date fat women"), but only the arseholes are open about it.

That said it's not at all obvious to me that short men are vastly less likely to end up in stable relationships at the end of the day, or that society spends a lot of time making fun of short men or (metaphorically) looking down on them. I would guess in general it's worse being fat or balding. It's difficult to tell where the border between valid complaint and overstating things lies.

Bloody hell, Tony, people can date who the fuck they like. Get over yourself.

This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve always sensed a ‘trying too hard to look wholesome’ thing going on that often belies the opposite.

He’s using Love Island contestants as a representative bunch of people? 😆😆😆😆

Or is he just upset that the women in Love Island wouldn’t date him?

Is it wrong to have preferences? I don’t find men who are shorter than me attractive 🤷🏻‍♀️ but there’s lots of men who wouldn’t find my body shape, hair colour, etc. attractive and that’s fine - not everyone is everyone’s cup of tea. What’s wrong with saying it?

I can't bear him. He makes my flesh crawl.

So glad I can watch TT now without him bellowing constantly and making it evident he knows sweet FA about history.

He was on every channel in something at one point. He is talentless and irksome in the extreme.

Maybe if Tony was nicer, his height would be less of an issue 😉

“It’s because I’m short, isn’t it?”

No, Tony, it’s because you’re a tiresome, creepy, bloviating twat.

Without having to defend him as a person, he makes a reasonable point here. I know teenage boys who look at insane advice on YouTube about how to increase your height because they are so worried about this. It's often presented as a reasonable 'requirement' in a way that would be called out as wrong if it were about women's weight, height, or similar.

This 100%.

Look at Rod Stewart. He's a shortarse but gorgeous and is not afraid to date and marry a string of tall Amazonian gorgeous women and he deserved every one I'm sure. It's what you do with it really.

I've met him.
He's a complete knob-head.

I agree.

But I do also think that some preferences are seen as more acceptable to be said. I do think it’s more acceptable for women to say they won’t date short men, than for anyone to say they wouldn’t date an overweight person. Tinder added height filters, but not weight filters - I imagine because they know that even though it would be widely used, they’d also be massively criticised for adding them. If I was single and on tinder, and the option was there, I’d use a weight filter but not a height one.

Height is not something that personally matters to me, but I hate when people act like it shouldn’t matter to anyone. Because you can guarantee they’ve got their own physical preferences which they’d defend. It’s just other people’s preferences they want to criticise.

People are attracted to whom they are attracted to .... End of. It's maybe frowned upon to acknowledge, but you can choose not to date someone short, fat, ugly, or from a different race or culture. That's what attraction is.. ..