Would you care to elaborate a bit on the homophobia aspect? I can certainly see the sexism part; the volume of the "look what she was wearing", victim blaming comments in general is surprisingly vast. The idealist in me would like to think that more than not those kinds of comments are due to how unconnected to the person they are and the anonymousness of the internet that brings out the most vile parts of people, because I wonder how many people would victim blame when it was their sister, daughter, mother, or friend. The cynic in me however would agree with you to a degree; whether conscious or subconcious, sexism and homophobia have crept into our society.

But I still find it hard to link homophobia. I know I'm drawing this view from my own experiences, but fight or flight, that's a natural response. It seems like a clear fact that men are more physically dangerous to men than women, and I bet the statistics would reflect that conclusively; more men kill men, right? There is no room to be homophobic when your life is at risk. I have friends that are somewhat homophobic, their initial reaction sometimes to the topic is a repulsive one, which I'd then point out to them, and call them out, like, "Why did you react that way? Who cares about so and so's sexuality." And they usually didn't have a real answer, they didn't know what to say. Not all of them, but the majority, easily. I think it's so engrained in some people, to view homosexuality with disgust that they don't see how that's a harmful reaction. In fact, they might not even harbor hate or resentment and literally could be blind to how they come off because that was deemed normal at one point in their lives. I don't want to say the opposite wouldn't hold water in other people. I've seen it firsthand too, and I could never understand the hate they held. And I certainly found the most hateful people were usually just in denial of their own sexuality the whole time. But I don't know if I could say it significantly affects their ability to empathize in general. I am certainly curious to hear your views though. Perhaps you have a different perspective I could see things from which'll shed some light on it for me. But I think if you call people out in a way that doesn't instinctively make them defensive, you can get through to people. If they aren't being "attacked," they have no reason to be hostile and you can actually have a rational and logical discussion about it. I stopped going on most social media because I felt you were never getting an accurate representation of what people think. The comments sections are filled with the people who are just confident and extreme in their views, and conclusions were already drawn, leaving no room for any real conversation to ever take place. Sorry for rambling a bit, but to finish up, I'm curious to hear your views, because personally, I think human psychology is a little more complex than sexism and homophobia directly result in the inability to empathize. But there's enough there to make me agree with you, I just think there must be other factors at work here, like cultural ones.