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I suspect most men who would not catcall a woman have also never seen catcalling. (I have never seen catcalling.)

This is presumably because men who think catcalling is acceptable behavior won’t do in the presence of a man that might not think catcalling is acceptable behavior.

:nod: Gloria Steinem said the same thing in one of the articles later collected into Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983). She was talking to both men (“You’ve never seen it, but it happens”) and women (“He’s never seen it because he’s decent; don’t assume he’s a liar”). (Though the latter was far, far less necessary back then.)

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However, I have been constantly distressed by my breasts since puberty; when I thought I was cis, I would have constant fantasies of cutting them off with a knife; when I stop binding regularly, I notice a deep loss of psychological stability.

Just had to get that off your chest, eh?

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That isn’t a solution, it just passes the buck one step further. Why does such a massive and common problem with prenatal development persist? Why hasn’t natural selection solved it?

Why hasn’t natural selection solved all developmentally-related conditions, like autism? I don’t know, but maybe prenatal development is hard to optimize. Maybe homosexuality is only an issue in the presence of certain genes. Prenatal development adds another layer of developmental noise.

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So here are the physical or prenatal factors that relate to homosexuality:
– Birth order
– Digit ratio
– Handedness
– Oto-acoustic emissions (inner ear physiology)
– CAH women
– Left-handedness
– Maternal stress (weaker evidence)
– DES exposure (weaker evidence)

While some of these studies are stronger than others, this is an impressive collection of evidence.

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Bob smokes three packs a day for years. Eventually, he develops sufficient lung damage that a lung transplant is the only way he will live beyond the year.

Alice and Bob are talking. Alice asks how Bob is doing, and Bob says, “I need a new lung.” Alice says, “I’m not sure you deserve a new lung. You’ve been heavily smoking for years. Probably there are other people deserve that lung transplant more.”

The thing is, they can both be right. Bob is correct when he says, “I need a new lung.” Alice is correct (for some moral systems, anyway) when she says, “You don’t deserve a new lung.” The problem arises when Alice (and Cathy, and Dianna, and Evelyn, and Frank the Ally) assume that “I need a new lung” is connotationally equivalent to “I deserve a new lung.” Bob might mean it that way. But he might not!

(Where this metaphor breaks down, though, is that Henry from the other post IS like Bob, except that a bunch of women are lining up to give him lungs. Whereas Ben, who was born with a congenital pulmonary flaw, gets chased with pitchforks and torches whenever he mentions he needs a lung.)

[I suggest that responses to this be forked elsewhere, to restore column length.]

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