A lot of "child-coded" discourse just seems like it's prejudiced against shorter people

Saying this as a 183 cm dude. I am not using the word "prejudiced" in terms of "hateful" here, I am using it in terms of making unfounded judgements. I just notice an awful lot of characters labelled "child-coded" are simply on the shorter side. And if they're also energetic? Yeah, it's hopeless. Antis will be all over that defending their fictional "purity".

I have shorter adult friends IRL, and from what they tell me this kinda thing can actually be harmful. You don't have to have ill intent to hurt someone with prejudice. Being treated like a child when you are an adult is demeaning. It gets worse when it implies limits on things you can enjoy. A character likes sweets, stuffed animals, board games? "Child-coded", which implies adults have to throw all that stuff out. That just seems fundamentally unfair.

There's a character on the old Batman show called Mary Dahl, aka Baby Doll. One of her major drives to crime was that as she grew up, due to her condition no-one would take her seriously as an adult. So she used her Baby Doll villain persona to weaponize the way the public saw her, and try to recapture the one time in her life she could pretend to be happy. She was of course a criminal, but her story was played for pathos. Obviously this is on the extreme end of things, but there are similar currents in "child-coded" discourse. I kinda hope DC uses the character again someday because these issues are worth discussing.

Link to the end of her debut episode to underline my point, spoilers obviously.