Ken,
No, I'm afraid I can't. I know that the idea was to have the right hand off the right hand 'control inceptor', and that the assumption was that the same would go for the left had - but I know about the Hornet rule, and don't know why the F-35C can go 'two hands off'.
(By the way, the photo (thanks Spaz) shows how wide the canopy arch is)
I can say that the F-35 requirements set called for fully automatic takeoffs from land, cat launch and also ski jump, so that may have had something to do with it.
It's a good illustration of just how fundamentally different a cat launch is from normal land based operations - the pilot is really a passenger from the time he completes his checks and signals 'ready' to the flight deck crew until quite some distance off the end of the cat - that places some significant requirements on the aircraft's flight control systems and flight characteristics, more so when you consider the wide range of conditions and launch weights (and catapult power - varies with age) that the aircraft has to accommodate.
Tricky stuff, this naval aviation
Best Regards
Engines