“Do I like him, or is he just tall?” It is a question that most straight women have asked themselves at least once; the answer, I’m sad to report, is almost always “just tall”. Nevertheless, the fact of these women’s strong revealed preferences for sky-scraping men — they are most happy, studies show, when their partners are eight inches taller — continues to be a critical decider in their selection process on dating apps. Of this there is no doubt.

But in the week that Tinder began testing a “paid height preference”, the toxic question of physical type popped its lofty head above the parapet once more. The dating app says giving users the ability to filter for height allows them to “connect more intentionally”, which smothers in euphemism what many men on social media have understandably taken to be an existential threat. Is it really over for the short king?

First, let’s address the alarmism. Hinge, Tinder’s dating app stablemate, has used a similar height-selection feature for a long time. Also like Tinder, it requires users to sign up for paid subscriptions, something which is anecdotally rare — particularly for women. Secondly, the tool is only a “preference”; some shorter-height profiles will still be shown even to those who opt to filter them out. What’s more, if shorter men do have a rough deal on dating apps — and there is no reason to believe they do not — then this feature will only partially automate a filtration process which women were doing manually anyway.

So, to the short kings reading, stand down. The radioactive discourse springing from Tinder’s announcement was never really about the news itself. What this week’s swamp of acrid tweets about the issue really revealed was the griminess of modern sexual discourse. The story provided an opportunity for embittered men and women to tear chunks out of each other. Some suggested a “weight filter” as a retaliatory measure, while other filters — “baby momma”, “TDS” (Trump derangement syndrome), “bra size” and “income” — were floated by a volley of disgruntled X users. What all the wailing amounted to was this: “You think I’m short? Well you’re a fat, flat slag — and also really judgemental.”

The phenomenon of dating apps has only revealed dating’s basest fundamental mechanisms, which have always existed but have never been quite so visible. A recent conversation with a male friend enlightened me. He, as a fairly successful dater, took pleasure in shocking me, an old romantic, with “the male perspective”. “All women fall into three categories,” he drawled. “Keeper, sleeper and sweeper. You marry the first, sleep with the second and sweep the third aside.”

He explained that the category into which women fell depended mainly on what they looked like; unlike men, they could not move between value bands by being, for example, rich or funny. Of course, an enlightened chap like him would never take this rubric seriously — but I got a sense, having done a little digging since (including on the theory’s source, a fascinating YouTube channel called “Hoe Math”) that many men do.

If women, then, are strictly valued on physical appearance, why shouldn’t men be? Every woman in the world knows how instantly and irrevocably the way men — suitors or otherwise — treat them changes based on whether they are thin, fat, blonde, mousy, in jeans or in a miniskirt. That women are more sexually selective — for reasons of biology, risk and investment in offspring — is a simple fact of life. To those despairing, a word of advice: look your best, be nice and be normal. And for those understandably frustrated by the surface-level nature of the apps, simply delete them. Life, among other things, is too short.

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Poppy Sowerby is an UnHerd columnist

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