Being Sinister

[cyberspice]

Since breaking my wrist I've learnt something about prejudice. I'm already well aware of prejudice for various reasons that I'd rather not write about here. But I've learnt about a new one. That of the pro right handed individual prejudice.

There has always been a prejudice against left handed behavior. In the past there has been religious and social persecution. Left handed people were referred to as sinister or evil. Children who were left handed were punished for for using their left hand and aversion therapies used to teach them to use their right. In Christian mythology Jesus sits on the right hand of God. Some cultures still have defined rules regarding the left and right hands. In Islam the left hand is used for cleaning oneself after toilet and the right is used for eating. Again this associates dirt and sin with the left hand.

My wrist is in a cast and my thumb is in it too so I can't actually touch the end of my thumb and forefinger. This makes using the right hand problematic. Luckily I'm fairly ambidextrous. I already use my left hand for tasks that right handers typically do with their rights, such as driving the mouse or trackpad, catching things, and so on. I can even write legibly, if not neatly, with it. So switching to using the left was not too onerous.

However I am now discovering how nearly everything is set up for right handed people. For example my microwave has the controls on the right and the door opens to the left. This assumes you will open it with you left hand whilst carrying what ever you will be cooking with the right before programming it, again with the right. Since I can't take any weight with my right hand right now this is difficult since I have to cross my arms. After realizing this I looked around and my dishwasher, washing machine, hob and oven all have their controls on the right. My TV has controls on the right. Even computer keyboards have the action keys such as return, arrow keys, insert and delete on the right.

We write from left to right. That favours the right handed. Left handed people who used quill pens would smudge the ink with their hands as they write. We even drive on the left because of right handedness. It became convention for knights to pass left of each other so that their sword arm, i.e. their right arm, was nearest the person they were passing. That became true for horse drawn vehicles and so when cars finally were invented they followed the same convention.

Its possible that left handed people do not notice the issues like I have. Mainly because they've always suffered them. I have to admit I've never asked anyone. But because I am right handed and I'm now having to use my left I can see the problems. Its like institutionalized misogyny. Women are programmed to behave in certain ways because we've adjusted to the environment and social frameworks in which we live.

I should get my cast off next week but it has been a learning exercise.

Comments

[blondelass.livejournal.com]

I'm a leftie! I've noticed the prejudice too. Look at simple things like knives, scissors, rulers, milk pans - all made for the right handed person. Even a lot of doors are right handed. The good thing about being left handed is that we write forwards (look at the way an o is formed, lefties form it in a clockwise direction).

The worst thing I still find is when people comment with "oh, you're left handed" like they've never met a left handed person before, or when people ask me to write something because they're fascinated because lefties write with their hand upside down and I amaze them because I don't. I also eat with my fork in the left hand, which I believe is the correct way because then you don't have to bother swapping hands when not using the knife. But because I use a knife and fork the "right handed way", I do struggle when cutting food, I usually end up tearing it instead.

[cyberspice.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention the scissors. I had trouble breaking in to my pizza tonight because I needed to cut it out of its bag and the scissors didn't work in my left hand.

I thought about the doors too but then realised that left handed doors are right handed if approached from the other side :-)

Did anyone try and make you right handed when you were a kid?

[blondelass.livejournal.com]

Don't think anybody did. Unless that's why I eat right handed. I know I had trouble with handwriting because the letters didn't flow right and at one point my words were too close together so the teacher suggested putting my finger on the page before writing the next word which just made the task impossible.

[bitbat.livejournal.com]

I'm lefthanded but I write my letter o anticlockwise

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a fairly large inbuilt bias toward lefthandedness. It's not that bad (at least hasn't been that bad for me, but maybe it's because I'm somewhat ambidextrous - I'm mostly left-handed, but I do a lot of things right-handed, and can't do some things (like play a guitar) left-handed).

What I love is stuff like how my handwriting is judged as suddenly worse than it really is (not that it's great) when someone notices I write with my left hand.

Anyway, I know that in elementary school, teachers tried to force my grandmother to be right-handed. I don't know anyone who's had that happen in contemporary times.

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Stupid things like cash machines, the oven door, sewing machines, that kind of thing. You just learn to deal with it the other way round. But apparently being left-handed takes a couple of years off your life just because you're more likely to have an accident using kit that isn't made to work well for you.

If you're a touch typist things like arrow keys aren't really a problem.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Actually, there was an interesting report about this in my stats mag a year or so ago. There's no evidence it is connected to whether stuff is "set up for you". In fact, a lot of the "dies earlier" thing is actually a statistical anomaly and much of the "dies earlier" is a myth.

To understand why, you need to understand why people thought left handers died earlier. There are a certain percentage of left handers in the population. However, it was discovered that there are a greater percentage at the age of (say) 20 than at 70. An obvious explanation is that left handers aren't quite as likely to live to 70.

However, in fact the percentage can be explained by another effect. In past times it was much more common to socially dissuade left-handedness. That is, your mum would say "no no, use your other hand" or in extreme cases, tie one hand behind your back. So one reason there are fewer 70 year old left handers is not that they died earlier but that at that time they were dissuaded from being left handed.

I can't recall the exact result but if I recall correctly this explained pretty much all of the "left handers die earlier" effect.

The accident because of "right handed kit" explanation was always an unlikely one -- I mean overall, not that many people die in "accidents" -- apart from car accidents and cars are pretty "neutral handed" (in that some are built steering wheel left and some are built steering wheel right). The effect it had to explain was huge -- there isn't actually very much that you can change behaviourally that changes your life expectency by over a year.

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

So it is! I stand corrected.

http://www.junkscience.com/news2/leftmort.html

[steer.livejournal.com]

Ah... but see what I wrote below about how it gave you an advantage in sport (and perhaps fighting). (My stats society magazine doesn't half have some weird articles).

[steer.livejournal.com]

The knights example is an interesting one. Left-handers are actually advantaged in many sports and competitions-- especially in times when it was more discouraged to be left handed so they were rarer. There's good reason to think a left handed knight would be considerably advantaged. The reason is obvious, a left-handed player faces lots of right handed players, a right handed player less often faces a right handed player. In cricket the phenomenon in well studied -- in the 1930s when there were fewer left handers they had a considerable advantage and did pretty disporportionately better at cricket.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Two effects that the stats there miss out.

1) If left-handers do consistently score better then you should expect teams to hire more -- indeed if the teams do it right they hire more until the scores approximately level out. In other words, the effect to look for is not left handers scoring more but more left handers in the team than in the general population.

2) There are more left handed people now than there were in the 30s. If the advantage is (as often thought) that it's "rare" to play against a left hander, this advantage will go down as the number of left handers playing goes up. In some sports you can (apparently) see this effect.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I was the rounders team secret weapon when I was at school as I am left handed and opposition bowlers couldn't get their heads round bowling to me properly so we would get lots of extra points without having to do any hitting or running. It's about the only time being left handed has had a positive advantage.

On my hen-do the man teaching us shooting kept saying he couldn't believe so many of us were left handed, I wonder if there are any studies into the amount of left handed-ness amongst goths.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I've thought before now that an undue number of my female friends are southpaws.

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

I'm told that being a leftie is an advantage for boxing because most people aren't expecting it/haven't practised so much defending against the 'opposite' direction.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's time you moved on from boxercise to actually hitting people then?

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

I have - we do body contact sparring for half an hour at the end of the session.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_pyromancer_/]

Spiral staircases in castles and great houses were usually built 'anticlockwise' as seen from the top, as that gave a right-handed defender more space to swing their sword when fighting an attacker coming up. But there are a few places where the owning family (and hence often a fair few of their retainers as by-blows of the family) were predominently sinister, and had all the stairways built clockwise to favour their own people.

[foxy76.livejournal.com]

'Its possible that left handed people do not notice the issues like I have'

I think we do notice them, we just have to put up with them! The worse thing has to be sewing scissors, Lindy and I have both complained about losing feeling in our thumbs after mammoth cutting sessions :-)

I hope you get full movement back asap!

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

I have a pair! You can also get some ambidextrous ones which don't have 'rings' for your thumb so you don't get blisters.

Mind, the 6 hours it took me to cut out the fabric for my big black coat did give me blisters.

[blondelass.livejournal.com]

I bought a pair of left handed scissors and I can really tell the difference.

[foxy76.livejournal.com]

I have better scissors now, from Ikea oddly enough, and I only get blisters from very excessive cutting :-)

Of course, the most important things that are right handed are cake forks - bah!

[andyguest.livejournal.com]

Is left handed sinister because its 'evil' or is sinister 'evil' because sinister is left handed and left handed is 'evil' ?

In other words, which use of sinister came first ?

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

I think left-handed came first and the word sinister got its current meaning from the existing cultural bias. It's Latin for left.

[mirrorworld.livejournal.com]

I write left-handed. I write on a blackboard with either hand. I play pool left handed. I play darts right-handed. I play squash and badminton with either hand. I kick right-footed, yet when I start walking, it's usually the left foot that goes first.

There is a belief (but I'm not sure if it's an urban myth) that the development of language created the right-hand bias in the brain (speech being a left brained activity causing that side of the brain to be more developed and allowing finer control of the right side of the body)

I haven't tended to have many problems with the evident right-hand bias in the world. I think like most people, I just adapt without really thinking about it.

[bitvacuous.livejournal.com]

Best thing anyone ever did for me was give me left handed scissors when I was about 8 thus acknowledging that maybe it was the tools not me that were inappropriate. There's a facinatng book called "living life lefthanded" that I read about 18 years ago which if you are interested you are welcome to borrow. My standard response to comments about being left hand and writing is "yes it's great isn't it - writing right handed always looks so awkward" because to me it does.

[bitbat.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you'd broken your wrist! (must read back to find out how and when etc)
I write with my left hand yet I sew and use scissors with my right.

I used to buy left-handed scissors for my classes at school and stick tape on them to differentiate, and always keep reminding kids to use the appropriate ones!