Welcome cwallay and Chase Arbuckle!

I am still learning how to work with social media so forgive my ignorance please. I'm a woman 4'10 and ¾". I'm an attorney. In my 20+ year career I've encountered an appalling amount of height discrimination, mostly at work. I concede that what short guys have to deal with in the social context is much worse that short women, but in the workplace it is a double-whammy for short women. We get both the gender wage gap and the height wage gap. In a professional world like legal, it's hard to be taken seriously when you are the size of a 12 year old.

I have a 15 year old son who is in the 1st percentile for height and a 10 year old son who is in the 3rd percentile. I feel so guilty for being the parent with the "bad" genes! I was pissed as hell when my perfectly healthy and normal boys were labeled with idiopathic short stature. The word idiopathic means having a disease. But they're not diseased at all - they are the picture of health. No HGH deficiency, but doctors were still pushing HGH treatment without a word about any negative side effects.

It makes me so angry. And I hate that whenever you confront someone with the mere idea of height discrimination they smirk and laugh in the most condescending and patronizing manner! It's so disrespectful.

As I've been learning and researching these issues for my book I've come to realize that most people don't think they're doing anything wrong because it's not illegal. It's not illegal to discriminate against short people at work and it's not illegal to force young children under the age of consent into years of hormone treatment. It's not illegal to be bigoted against the short.

Race and sex discrimination were rampant and socially accepted before they became illegal. What we need to do is lobby for a change in laws. We need to unite and follow the game plan used by the feminist, civil rights and LGBT movements. It's the only practical way to work toward change, because confronting people individually is not going to do enough to change minds. It will take a social movement with lots of loud voices to move a mountain.

It's too hard to be the few small voices out there. How do we make people listen? Who knows any publicists and journalists?

Welcome, and my apologies for assuming that you were male. Most of the people who are concerned about heightism are male, not only because males tend to get the harshest end of it, but because much of the heightism against women gets mistakenly dealt with as if it is a gender issue, instead of heightism. Anyway though, the workplace discrimination that you speak of is one of the hallmarks of heightism that affects both genders, so it's certainly wonderful to have you as an ally in fighting the good fight, especially since you are someone who has achieved a level of success in life while facing the ugly sting of heightism.

As far as legal remedies to heightism, I think that should be an eventual path to take, but right now, we would be putting the cart before the horse if that were the main focal point because we're at a point in time where short people won't even admit that they suffer discrimination. We are backed so far into a corner with shame, and are subject to such harsh humiliation, especially if we dare speak of the discrimination we face, that most short people either suffer in silence, or resort to self-deprecating measures to prove that they're "one of the good ones" who accepts their inferiority and won't raise a fuss about it. We're pretty much handcuffed until more short people decide they don't like the taste of dirt anymore. Those of us who speak against heightism now, are treated as extremists and pariahs because we generally fight alone without one iota of support, thus, I agree fully that it will take a unified front in order for us to make any progress.

It truly is sad that we live in a society that sits back and does nothing while healthy children get diagnosed with "idiopathic short stature," because even the medical community buys into the notion that short people are inferior. No society that prides itself on equality and fairness should accept children being injected with chemicals for reasons that are cosmetic at best, and for profit at worst.

As far as publications and journalists go, they are generally our enemies. In the past few years, there have been numerous instances of large media entities misrepresenting studies so as to prove the existence of "short man syndrome," and many other instances of nonsensical logically-flawed bigotry. When they do decide to put forth an attempt to discuss the issue seriously, it is a paltry attempt to do so where they will start the segment off by playing "Short People" by Randy Newman, and they'll always invite a comedian to make light of the issue, therefore, you can see how seriously they take the issue. At best, they'll discuss it as a fascinating social phenomenon that has no explanation. They'll never put the blame on heightists though.

I think that now, as a movement, we're still stuck in "rally the troops mode," but it's just too bad that most of the troops don't see this as a fight that is worth fighting. We're pretty much going to remain stagnant until short people decide to start acting like a group, and take what is rightfully ours.

However, every time a person like yourself joins the fight, we get one step closer to where we need to be. I'm really a fan of the stuff you've done on Twitter thus far, so I was really pleased to see that you had signed-up here. Welcome!

PS- BTW- Michigan already has legislation against heightism, and the cities of San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Ottawa also have codes against heightism. Like I said, Step One is getting short people to finally wake up, but when they do, we can use those laws as templates to rally support.