I stole some of this from a Reddit comment, but let’s talk about instincts in humans.

Anyway, people (mostly liberals) like to believe that humans don’t have instincts — that we share nothing in common with the atavism of animals. But, very obviously, that’s wrong. I think where libs steer from the path of wisdom is that they think saying “instinct” means that the action or response cannot be modified by culture or the environment. But of course it can and is in humans and many animals.

We have an instinctive response to things with a large heads, big eyes, and small bodies. We have an instinctive sexual response and (very, very, very likely) sexual attraction to quite particular characteristics. We have an innate fear response (mediated by culture) of the dark. All of this feels “normal” to us so we don’t see it as instinctive, but to an alien observing it’d seem no different than a cat instinctively scratching around a litter box or a monarch butterfly migrating. Because there are variations and modifications of these tendencies don’t mean they are not instincts. Animals have variation here, too, by the way!

So the liberal belief that “humans don’t have instincts” is extremely suspect, and I think we probably have far more of these than most realize. But we just call it “natural” or “normal” and thus misclassify what’s happening.