[scarmig]

As a pretty short, straight-seeming bi guy (5'2), I have a unique perspective that might be enlightening about the importance of height to women.

Although I hate projecting people onto the 0-10 spectrum, I'll do it here for illustrative purposes.

With women, I have a great deal of difficulty attracting anyone: it's less that I match with numerical ones and twos than not matching with anyone at all. Not no one--and those I do succeed with are typically even middling on the spectrum--but it's a massive crapshoot.

With men, I can go out to a bar on any night of the week and bring home someone in the top half and usually an eight or nine. Sure, that's meaningless shit, but converting those into relationships isn't difficult at all (or at least no more difficult than anyone in the gay community has converting hookups to relationships).

The difference is incredibly striking, and anyone who says height isn't a factor in women dating is so wrong that it's incomprehensible that they've ever bothered to even talk to a woman about how she feels about height in dating partners.

[sanoli]

I have plenty of women friends who have told me flat-out they wouldn't date a man shorter than them.

[scarmig]

That's pretty common as a phenomenon: I wouldn't say it's a cliff so much as a very steep grade. My current girlfriend is an inch taller than me, and taller than that in heels (and I love her in them!). But she's the tallest person I've ever dated.

It also shows the shortcomings (no pun intended...) of the 0-10 rating model: there's neither generic Man nor generic Woman. Your rating to women you're more than two or three inches taller than (could be 0, could be 10) is almost entirely independent of your rating to women you're two or three inches shorter than (0).