My short friends didn't even know what Heightism is

I wouldn't expect anything different from short people. They have been beaten, condescended, smirked, disregarded, yelled, out-talked, lied, subtle and not-so-subtle reminded, ignored, double-standarded, platituded, and mocked into a state of denial that they cling to with a death grip. Even the short guys who know that they get mocked will think that heightism ends with the mocking, but they either aren't perceptive enough to comprehend the whole story that is happening to them in almost every interaction they have, or, they are so uncomfortable at the thought of even dropping their guard for a second that they often subscribe to machismo where they think they'll be able to fight fire with fire or self-advocate themselves to equal standing with those who discriminate against them. Their denial doesn't end with their strategies for dealing with others either because many short guys find the concept of taking the mask off to themselves in the anonymity of their own mind to be so uncomfortable that they will never allow themselves to get that deep even when they're all alone. Even before the lightswitch turned-on in my own mind, I could always sense that something was off about the results I received in many social settings. Something didn't quite make sense to me because there was always this sinister way that people talked to me, the way they looked at me, the way they postured their bodies, the tone they used in addressing me, how quickly they became hostile toward extremely benign comments of mine, and how I often felt like I was talking to myself when I spoke in a group setting. I always spoke against people who mocked my height directly, but something was just off about the way many of my interactions went. I noticed that even though I was extremely socially-capable that I seemed to randomly have issues that people who were less socially-inclined than I somehow avoided. Sometimes, I thought it was some random phenomenon where I was always running into weird scenarios, and sometimes, I thought that the world was just extremely difficult to navigate for some reason. I certainly had my share of successes in social settings, but there were often times when things would end abruptly, or people just seemed to be holding back with me in ways that they didn't with others, and I seemed to always have to defend my opinion and found myself being challenged over the most trivial conversation topics. It was extremely confusing. Even though I had plenty of social acumen and other abilities, at one point in my life, I wondered if I had some type of social disorder that was causing these oddball reactions in people.

When I learned about heightism though, at first, I was happy that there were a few people who were addressing the obvious instances of heightism, but when I started to learn about the various nuances of heightism, such as zone-of-space issues, people thinking that short men are childlike and treating them as such, people not wanting to hear our opinions, and so-on, the lightswitch flicked-on with a resounding thud and I could see everything plain as day. It was like a cloak of discomfort that I didn't even know I was wearing was immediately cast-off. The reason I'm saying this is because short men walk around with the same cloak of discomfort without even knowing they are wearing it. They don't know that their social experience is diluted through a layer of condescension, disregard, vitriol, and scorn that is based on their height, but they still find themselves exhausted from trying to accomplish simple social objectives. This part of a short man's psyche is extremely tender. It's an open wound, thus, when you attempt to discuss heightism with a short man, he's going to lash-out just like your friend did. This is a way to minimize the pain of having an open wound prodded. Another indoctrinated injury in the short man's psyche is he is burdened with the task of portraying the illusion that he is just as respected as his taller peers. All men are burdened with the responsibility of appearing macho and putting forth an image of being respected wholesale, so short men have to work extra hard to keep this illusion going. They're playing damage control by trying to nurse an open wound, while also expounding energy to pretend like the wound doesn't exist. There's certainly a lot of sticker-shock when you first learn the ins-and-outs of how heightism works, and I fully understand why short men are so timid about seeing the world in its true essence, but to me, having to carry the baggage of the status-quo, which is such that we are to be peons who are here to reaffirm the tall man's superiority, while also disguising our wounds from the public, was far more exhausting and uncomfortable than seeing the world for what it is and developing strategies to not waste energy in certain scenarios. A burden was also lifted when I started having realistic expectations of how society was going to treat me from that point forward.

All of this is why we have to keep having these discussions. We have to get short men past this stage of denying that their wounds exist in the dead of the night, while also supplying a cloak of immunity for the tall man's sick game of degrading us for his own gain, and the way that women squeal with delight over this narrative. Short men are exhausting a great deal of energy pretending like everything is a-ok, and we have to deprogram their minds of all the nonsense they have been indoctrinated with. They need to hear the truth at least once in their lifetimes, and the ones who are perceptive enough to have some sense of what's going-on are probably about to die on the inside from all the cognitive dissonance they've accumulated. We need to keep this dialogue going so that they can see that avoiding wisdom isn't going to help anything, and we need to steer them clear of all the clowns who tell them that shielding this wisdom from short men is the solution. Those clowns don't have the collective interests of short men in mind and aren't the world dominators that they would like us to believe. Like I eluded to already, after the sticker-shock subsides, and you start thinking clearly about how obsessed the world is with praising the tall man while marginalizing the short man, you start to develop better life strategies, and can focus your energies on things that are actually beneficial to you instead of expounding a great deal of energy nursing wounds and fueling illusions. Short men are going to fight us kicking and screaming the entire time, but they need to know the truth, and it's time for them to start facing some ugly truths so they can start developing better life strategies, instead of using the BS solutions that they are fed by everyone else, including other short men. Your friend is still in the denial stage with almost every other short man. It's sad to see this repeatedly being the case, but this is the same, sad narrative we get from the revolving door of short men with every generation. If they're going to fight, they should fight against the societal structures that drive heightism, but at this point in-time, they'd rather live in denial, or even worse, fight against those of us who address heightism. It's a sad state of affairs, but that's the reality of the situation right now.