Races and romance poll

We're an extremely vocal minority

For me it's not just about height. Dwarves aren't just short, they have a specific dwarf look that is just not the same as human men. They're stocky/burly, and I'm just not into that build. I don't like human men with that build, either, regardless of height. For example, I dislike the way male Hawke looks in his mage Champion armor for that reason. (I also don't find dramatic height differences to be cute.)

I'm not a height queen when it comes to men. At 4'11'', pretty much all men are taller than me. I know some women demand a 6'+ dude, but I'd be fine with a short guy that is 5'6" or something.

Yeeesss. 👌

Though if the opportunity for a dwarf x dwarf or qunari x qunari romance comes up I'll probably take it. But for real, Sera is Adaar's tiny elf wife, she could pick her up with one arm and it K I L L S M E with cute. 😭❤

Such betrayal? Right in front of my salad?

People have strong, subconscious feelings about lots of stuff that’s not actually natural. For example, money is a social construct in much the same way that masculinity and femininity are social constructs (i.e. it technically springs from natural needs, but its current connection to nature is extremely loose). However, that doesn’t mean people only have shallow, highly-abstract feelings about money. It dictates a lot of our day-to-day lives. So people think about money on a subconscious, visceral, even personal level — but just like gender expression, if we put forth a lot of effort, we can change how money operates, ‘cause we made it up. For more details on how gender expression is largely cultural, see Andraste_Reborn’s post with the book links.

Going back to the money analogy, when people talk about stuff like massive wealth inequality, they’re likewise not talking about individual wealthy people. If you punish individual wealthy people but the system that created them stays intact, nothing actually changes — new ultra-wealthy people spring up to take their place. Plus, massive wealth inequality also harms the wealthy, because now they must live in terror of losing their spot and plunging straight into poverty.

Similarly, the idea of toxic masculinity is not about punishing or shaming men. It’s about a system that creates certain outcomes, harming people of all gender expressions. People who fit the current perfect ideal of masculinity may benefit on the surface, but they live in terror of doing or being something that will void their masculinity. Exactly as you pointed out, lacking one tiny aspect of masculinity (height) very quickly destroys someone’s masculinity. This is not as true of femininity, which is usually more permissive of things like being tall or wearing pants. This is why people are so interested in broadening the scope of masculinity so it’s not so restrictive.

No one is telling young boys that 'real men' engage in any of these activities.
They may learn that certain behaviors are more common in a specific gender, but they do not learn that 'real men' have these ideas.

Toxic masculinity is a bogus term.

Also because the term originated from radicals who looked at some data, in regards to men and their higher likelihood to be violent perpetrators which is often linked to men being more likely to be aggressive, competitive etc etc. Therefor it is in fact a term used to slander commonly masculine traits, based on some misguided ideas.

There is a reason it is called 'toxic masculinity' afterall.

So... Back to the topic. I marked every male option, aside from elves, because I like bearish guys, and up till now elves in Thedas are 100% slim. Yet to see a hairy elf or one with a beard, so that's a minus for me too.

There’s a bearded elf in Dragon Age: Redemption, but last I heard his canon status was questionable, at least with regards to the beard.

Though with the right vallaslin, some elves do look faintly bearded. How would you feel about a really stacked elf (who’s as much an outlier from average elves as Bull is from average vashoth) with one of the beardier vallaslin? There wouldn’t be the sensation of hair, but the look might be there.

They canonically () have some body hair, as evidenced by the fact that Seramancers can shave something rude into their privates.

Obviously it’s unclear how far beyond the pubes their hair extends, but who knows? There could be enough natural variation to get lucky there.

Understood, but we don’t know how hairy they can get exactly.

Even with dwarves and humans, who can definitely get lots of body hair, they really only have lots of body hair if their name is Varric or Thom. Everyone else is sort of a Ken doll by default. Only when a character is explicitly hairy do they get any visible chest hair, and then they get loads of it. In Thedas, chest hair is a binary, not a spectrum.