First, it in’t always any particular way when somebody responds in a comment section. You demonstrate again with your language in this comment that you are willing to make sweeping and spurious judgements about people based on superficial criteria, which is a central complaint of the original piece. If you’ve never met a man, short or otherwise, who didn’t feel the need to make this kind of joke then you have my sympathy. Sounds like you have been subjected to a bunch of jerks. The author specifically said that she was expected to date people who were “beneath” her standards, not people who didn’t “meet her standards”.

We seem to agree here, there’s no need or justification to be rude to or disparage people who we don’t find attractive. We should then be careful not to make generalizations like “dating a man shorter than me brings out their own personal insecurities”, given the fact that many short men don’t feel insecure about their “stature”, just as many fat women (and men) don’t feel insecure about their weight. Isn’t it interesting that few people would judge a man for dating a very poor woman and yet many would counsel a woman dating a poor man, “you can do better than that, dear”, the same way that they would judge a woman for dating a short man or judge a man for dating a fat woman, in each case because they saw that choice as “settling” for someone “beneath” accepted standards. Words have meaning, and of course they reveal much about the writer or speaker.