Emma, many congratulations - somewhat belatedly as I'm finding it difficult to keep up with the forums at the mo. Your energy is a wondrous thing - long may it enliven us!

Nell.

There's a human tendency to take the 'norm' and insist that it's the 'natural'. The norm is that men are taller than women, just as they're stronger, and it's scary how easy it is to slide into assuming that it's therefore the way things are supposed to be, and that any couple who deviate from that are in some way slightly odd.

I have a female friend who's at least 6ft, and simply doesn't think of it as an issue.

Two important points there Emma.

One. We take notice of what are generally artificial standards. Fashion is a perfect example of this self-inflicted con.

Two. When you decide something is simply not an issue it ceases to be one.

That is how I operate in my life. I do my own thing. If you like my thing you are welcome to join me. If you don't, don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out. Your choice.

I'm happy. if you're not happy that's your problem, deal with it.

Best

John

Whilst I agree that, as intelligent beings, we should not be negative towards those among us who don't conform to supposed "norms", the tendency to do so probably comes from a survival instinct. Among animals who tend to band together, one who stands out draws attention to the group, and thereby attracts unwanted attention. (Imagine an albino lion, or a zebra with a very long neck.) Therefore, the tendency to be wary of those who are different, and the tendency to feel self-conscious about being different, are part of our instincts. It's just that, in human society, the standards set as "normal" shift within a person's lifetime, and are mostly completely arbitrary in any case.

Animals can be forgiven for being unable to adapt to shifting norms; intelligent humans cannot. Myself, I just use these things as inspiration.

In an attempt to make you feel better, Emma, I had a comment about my short story "Working the Room" which related to the way I had described the heroine. I had described her as having fashion-model looks, and her height as a little shorter than five-feet-seven, and I was told that this put her height at odds with "fashion-model looks". So, evidently, fashion models are supposed to be tall. (Of course, it depends how you visualise "fashion-model looks". Some might think of a skeleton who's a heroin addict.)

Alex

Nell, many thanks.

Contrary to appearances, height's really not something I spend my time worrying about - it only came up because of the thread about what women look for in a man, and then Len brought it up here. If I hadn't been squeezing my tear-sodden shoulder out after my daughter's woe, I probably wouldn't have pursued it.

Mind you, it's not always women for whom it's a problem. My father loved the Navy and all things nautical, but had to do his National Service in the Army, because he couldn't face two years of bumping his head in all the ship doorways!

Enough! I've got work to do!

Emma

One of the tallest men I've ever met was a lieutenant commander in the Navy. Mind you, the bumps on his head probably made him seem taller.


Alex

Congratulations from me too, Emma!

In between mopping her eyes and patting her shoulder I felt like saying, 'welcome to the world of being too tall, sweetheart!'

Those are the words I wish I'd heard!

I'm 5'5" -- which I believe is pretty much the average height for a woman -- but my best friends in school always teased me for being short. Admittedly, they were 5'9", 5'11", 6'1", 6'4" and 6'5" (the last two were boys, I hasten to add!). I spent my teenage years longing to be tall, though I no longer care about it overmuch. It doesn't help that my parents are 6'2" and 5'7", and my brother 6'4", so, in all justice, I should have grown taller. The final, long-expected growth spurt to promote me to the rank of 5'7" just never happened. Not fair!

In other words, being average height isn't that much fun either, and my shorter pals (from 5' to 5'4") are always complaining about being too short and having corgi legs. If being tall, short, and average are all bad, doesn't that make the whole thing a bit pointless?

It's a shame we can't be "of a certain height" as well as "of a certain age". Unfortunately, you can't lie about your height (unless you're a hypnotist, I suppose).


Alex

Yes, it is a shame. I suppose height does have a practical impact on lives - changing lightbulbs, living in low-beamed cottages - which looks don't, and age doesn't except perhaps at the extremes. (And you can lie about your height in a literal way, though it's too susceptible of disproof. I have a friend who refuses to admit to 6ft: swears she's 5ft 11", though she's very clearly taller than her 5ft 11" husband!)

Emma

<Added>

And Fredegonde, thanks for the congrats.

At the other extreme, being very short makes it easier to paint the skirting board and less of a stretch to pick up kids' toys.

Going back to Fredegonde's comment, it is amusing the way people stretch definitions in order to draw a line between "them" and "us". I sometimes toy with the idea of having a character who hates people with feet bigger than size 10, or who pluck their eyebrows (taking two ideas at random, and with apologies to anyone to whom either apply). To me, variety is what makes people interesting, but some people see it as threatening, and will even invent a dividing line if they can't find one. In fact, some go so far that the line is virtually a circle around their own feet.


Alex

I think people often feel first and decide why later. For example A meets and dislikes because B wakes up a sense of painful failure in A (which actually has origins in school or somewhere). A feels failure, but thinks 'I hate people who go on and on about their business', and articulates it as 'I do think people shouldn't wear suits at the weekend.' The friend who A says this too can't think what the fuss is about. As fiction writers, of course, this provides lots and lots of scope for unreliable narrators.

The other reason I think is that some people feel more comfortable when they understand how the world works and have confidence that they can predict it. They make very good scientists. This develops into a taste for working out the unspoken rules of the universe and society, and then into feeling comfortable within the spoken ones, and finally, if they're feeling that the world isn't working that way and they haven't got a grip on how it is working, on searching desperately for some kind of rhyme or reason to cling to: like that it's all the fault of people who have feet bigger than size 10.

Emma

<Added>

should be 'meets and dislkes B because B

Emma, that second reason intrigues me. It's been my experience that the most likely people to have irrational prejudices are those who have the least logical way of viewing the world. I've come across very few scientist-types who have expressed serious prejudices, other than, perhaps, a (peer-led) tendency to be dismissive of "arty types". I've heard far more in the way of prejudice - of the selective-memory type - from people with poor education, or other reasons (often self-imposed) for having chips on their shoulders.

I suppose the big exception to the above is that rather boring women-are-better-than-men-men-are-better-than-women argument that constantly crops up in the media. Even that, it seems to me, has more to do with members of the chattering classes wanting to get their faces on TV, than with genuine narrow-mindedness.


Alex

Most people generalise from within their subjective experience and extrapolate a law, about women being more compliant, say. And then it gets mixed up with how people tend to see what they expect to see (not seeing passive-aggressive behaviour, say, as aggressive) which re-inforces their generalisation. I agree that one of the things that - on the whole - you get more of, the higher up the education ladder you go, is an awareness of the subjectivity of your own position and experience and reactions. And it's working its way down the education ladder too: even my 12yr old daughter is being introduced in History to judging the ways that sources may be unreliable.

But I know some very highly educated bigots (though not many very intelligent ones). In some ways bigotry is scarier in intelligent people, and/or educated people because you instinctively feel they have no excuse. Some of the most frightening people, I think, are highly intelligent people who are very right- or very left- wing. I sometimes wonder if it's because they have all too acute an apprehension of the alarming randomness and contingentness of the world, and yearn for a strict structure - Communism, or fascism, or religious fundamentalism, say - which appears to explain how everything works, and how everything should be.

Emma

In some ways bigotry is scarier in intelligent people, and/or educated people because you instinctively feel they have no excuse.

Definitely, Emma. And also because it's usually impossible to reason with them. Such people tend to be too intelligent and well-informed not to feel (too) keenly the superiority of their understanding, but not intelligent enough -- or wise enough, rather -- to see the limitations of their individual viewpoint.

[quote]but not intelligent enough -- or wise enough, rather -- to see the limitations of their individual viewpoint[quote]

or not imaginative enough. That's why it's so important to teach children to think creatively (probably but not necessarily through writing), well beyond the confines of the ones who are good at it. So much bigotry, intolerance and lack of compassion springs from not imagining yourself in the other person's place.

Emma

There are a number of life skills that I feel ought to be taught in schools, including:

- Recognising when one is making an assumption, rather than going by known facts
- Understanding when someone presenting a "fact" might have their own agenda
- Understanding, indeed, when a "fact" is actually just a strongly-held opinion
- Learning to switch paradigms as a way of thinking about issues from different perspectives
- Listening to, and reading carefully, any statements that are held up as proving a claimed interpretation of events or opinions (because they often don't prove anything, or at least not what is claimed)
- Understanding risk and statistics (very important for when politicians and journalists talk about these things, because some of them rely on people's lack of understanding to distort the message)
- Learning to follow written instructions (nothing to do with prejudism, but it's amazing how few people can do this simple thing)

I guess some will ask why these things ought to be taught in school, rather than at home. The answer is that both should be done, of course, but teaching them in schools would improve the chances of all children gaining similar experience of these important skills, all of which are becoming increasingly essential in modern life.


Alex