Something sinister
Having lived a large chunk of my life with a lefty, I can confirm that they do have a bit of a rough time when it comes to living in a predominantly right-handed world.
Scissors, can openers, doors, computer peripherals, hairdryers, mobile phones, knives, golf clubs, musical instruments, pens, desks (especially school and college types), ring binder type folders, firearms, those pens chained to the desk in banks…
Most of these things, if properly designed don’t even need to be ‘handed’; stupid ergonomics, relying on specific plastic moulding often renders these items unusable for no good reason.
But it’s not the physical inconveniences that surprises me, rather it is still the social stigma that surrounds the left-handed.
The title I used – ’sinister’ is actually a term synonymous with left-handed.
The left is usually the bad side… in most religions, the left hand is seen as less than perfect and apparently in Norwegian, venstrehåndsarbeid means ’sloppy work’ but literally translates as ‘left-hand work’.
I’d like to say I’d draw a comic using my left hand and my right-handed pens in solidarity with my left-handed friends, perhaps publicise their plight, but it would just be venstrehåndsarbeid.
Philip J Schadenfreude on
Perhaps we should look a left handed people are being special - no that doesn’t sound quite right. Unique - no thats not right either as there are millions of them. Different - no it could be that right handed people are different too. So i conclude that left handed people are just that, left handed people and we should recognise this and not ignore it.
actually, my biggest problem is martial arts.
I really don’t understand it.
Why doesn it matter so much?
Most of the things I do alot (other then write, which I struggle to do with one hand) I can do with either hand just aswell.
These social stigmas worry me alot. They point at a very shallow culture, and when it spreads across so many cultures, a very shallow species.
Maybe it’s just where I live, but I have personally never encountered any sort of anti-left-handed propaganda or sentiment. I kind of assumed that sort of feeling went out of vogue many years ago. Perhaps I’ve just been living under a rock.
I do understand the predicament about not being able to use right-handed equipment, though. Many of my friends are left handed, and I know they have problems with this. Musical instruments I’m not so sure about, however. Many (like the French horn) you actually play primarily with your left hand.
The word sinister comes also from the Latin word sinus meaning “pocket” which was a traditional Roman toga had only one pocket, located on the left side for the convenience of a right-handed people.
I prefer to use the term ’special’…
Martial arts? In what way? I suspect that it’s something to do with practicing with other people… Of course, in boxing, you’d be a South-Paw.
Ben, As a right-handed person, I have to say that I used to think like that, but having observed a lefty for some considerable time I can see that what we might think of as minor annoyances actually build up on a daily basis… Left handed people are somewhere in the region of 20 times more likely to die operating a right-handed product than right-handed people… and often, they have no choice.
easca, I’m not saying there is an overt problem in society, I think we’re fairly tolerant of things like that. But I do know people who were forced to write right-handed at school because left was seen as wrong. Also, it depends where you are… lefties have problems eating in places such as India:
http://www.indax.com/eating.html
As for musical instruments, it depends which you play… mostly it is the string instruments that cause the problems.
And Speaker, (Hi), that’s rather interesting. I always thought that it derived from ’sinistral’ meaning ‘left’… but it makes sense and I’ve always been terrible at latin.
I was saying that I don’t get why society has a tendency to be predujice against lefties.
My sister copped alot of crap at school for using both hands to write.
Tho about the death rate, I am 20 times more likely to kill other ppl using a right handed tool in my left, cos it can be so frustrating. Drills are the worst.
My mistake… i don’t get that either… I think if you are in a minority, for anything, you’re going to get from the rest.
I hear you on the drill thing. The last time I used one it was on a piece of sheet metal. It went ok for a few minutes before we had a spinning sheet of death.
Oh yeah that is always fun for sh*ts and giggles.
Tho it gets nasty catching it on your knuckles.
hoho, classic. I’ve never heard that expression before, but I like it… I will try to use it myself at some point today.
Yeah? Great aussies saying.
Best pick up line ever “so what you do for sh*ts and giggles?”.
he said that to me once, and i had never heard it either. maybe im just not aussie enough. ill try harder, i promise!
It really can be quite a pain being left-handed, in ways righties just wouldn’t even think of. For example, there is a local shop with very heavy doors and the way they lead onto the street means that if I push them open with my left hand I get stuck in the door. This is very embarrassing as I’m always getting stuck and someone has to rescue me from the door’s evil clutches!
The next time you see someone stuck in a deparment store door, feel sorry for your left-handed contemporaries.
i’m right handed, as in i write with my right hand, but everything else i think i do about equally with both hand. are lefties different? do they do everything with their left hand? its just something i noticed while i was doing normal stuff after i read this.
I like living on the left coast.
I like using the left side of my brain.
I don’t like using right-handed scissors, though.
I’m a lefty and early on I learned to live in a right-handed world, which made me a bit ambidextrous. I never even thought there were desks for lefties like me until I reached college! Notebooks even! Then again I live in a third world country.
At least I never got spanked for being a lefty. My mom was a lefty when she started school but her teachers in school forced her to write using her right hand. So she was a forced righty in writing but a lefty in anything else. I glad she told my teachers when I started schooling not to force me to write with my right hand.
Interesting.
“Just for sh*ts and giggles” is a pretty common expression ’round these parts as well, though a lot of the older generation amend it to “grins and giggles.”
Adam, you oughta try drawing with your left hand some… the left hand is controlled by the right side of the brain, which also controls visual gestalt and creativity, among other things. One of the professors in the art department at my college always made his figure drawing students draw the figure twice, once with the dominant hand, and once with the other (usually left) hand. By the end of the semester, most kids were working with a pencil in each hand, going simultaneously. It was rather awe-inspiring.
About the brain thing: you can find really neat things in pych books where people with the corpus callosum has been severed try to copy a picture or some words with one hand or the other.
Seraphine: you’re a lefty? Neat! I always sort of wished I was, though I’m not sure why. Maybe the association with increased intelligence. Oh, and I emaild you’re boss-lady about having some art up at the Witch’s Brew. Hope she likes it!
When I was a child I always admired left handed people and tried to imitate them. Never could make it work for me. Now I’m at the age when I think it’s a good idea to try again. They say exercising the brain in many ways is a good deterrent for Alzheimer’s. So I add writing left handed, and folding my arms in the opposite direction, to my list of brain exercises.
Hmmm, now where did I put my pen?
it’s a little bit odd that the right brain is said to control the left hand, and is more associated with creativity. my twin sister’s right handed, and she’s more of the artist, ( I’m her alarm clock)
Well, to be honest, the left-brain/right-brain dichotomy has been pretty thoroughly debunked. At least as much as psychology ever debunks anything. The new thought is: “everyone’s different.”
But, as my brother said the other day, “I’ve been blinded by mainstream-media-science (TM)!”
Hello Lightheaded and Anne, thanks for commenting.
Lightheaded… it seems your experience, and that of your mum are quite common. There seems to be a generation of older lefties that were forced to use their other hand, wheras more recently it seems to be tolerated.
Anne, I see you are originally from our neck of the woods. manchester to Utah, that’s some move.
Thanks Roo, that’s really interesting. I’ll give it a go, and depending upon the results, I will either post it here or somewhere else.
Tia, you’re a twin? And one of you is left handed and the other right? I once heard a theory that every left-handed person was a twin in early development… creeoy and interesting.
hmm, i don’t think too much of most psychology, but that sounds more probable than th’ old hypothesis. neurobiology!
i’ve heard of times people who were twins early in development, one absorbed the other, and the absorbed twin reappears later in life as a tumor with teeth in it or something. it seems i narrowly escaped being one of those
I’m glad my husband and I are both righties. He tries to hide enough stuff from me (and fails) without my saying never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.
I rather like being sinister, cat-handed, etc. I agree with the rather tongue-in-cheek saying, ‘We are all born right-handed; only the gifted overcome it.’
Dexter means right, and is also a name that most people associate with nerds (or a small redheaded boy genius with an annoying older sister). No worse than Sinister, imho!
I do see how language holds an anti-lefty bias… “dexterous” means skillful, and besides “sinister” there’s also “gauche,” which I think means “left” in French.
I don’t think right-handed people actually have nasty thoughts about left-handed people very often– at least not in Europe or America– but there is a tendency to ignore their needs when designing equipment.
As for making a comic with your left hand… there’s a very entertaining comic called “Left-Handed Toons by Right-Handed People” that I read every day.