When I was in kindergarten, the teachers called in my mother for a special meeting. They wanted to send my the the special ed school, because I couldn’t use scissors. My mom asked them if they realized I was left handed, and that they would look stupid using the wrong scissors too. I guess any moron can become a teacher.
We left handers use the right side of our brains which scientists have concluded is the creative side of the brain, as opposed to the left or analytical side. I don’t know of a specific site, but when I was younger my parents got me a book called the Left Handed Book. It listed a substantial list of actors, musicians, and painters, all whom are world renowned, such as Picasso, Fred Astaire, etc.
My parents had a book called “Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs.” None of it was true, of course. All you’ve done here is make the assertions about brain hemisphere dominance, and it’s not scientists who make those statements, and those statements are not conclusions. The statements are made by new age spiritualists, and the statements are merely assertions that have not been validated by empirical research. People – lefties, especially – just enjoy the myth because it makes them “special” rather than merely different. Being able to rattle off a few people who are both left handed and creative proves only that left handed people may be creative, but so can right handed people, so… shrug. I would think that except for baseball pitching, there is not a single career that has a higher percentage of lefties than righties and indicates that they are “more” anything.
Another lefty checking in.
My sports were tennis (college), boxing (Golden Gloves) and basketball (HS) and I can absolutely tell you that being left handed was a HUGE advantage in all 3, not a disadvantage.
People are so used to playing/sparing/defending righties, that when they go up against a lefty…you can see the deer in the headlights split-second when they can’t understand what the hell they are seeing (I can also attest to this…a lefty from Colorado hit me so hard in GG Nationals one year…I kept trying to answer the ringing phone in my head for 3 rounds).
Polo is another one. Point taken though.
Another lefty checking in. Handicapped? No way. Hell, the biggest inconvenience of being a lefty, AFAIAC, is that occasionally on a computer keyboard, the ‘dumb’ right hand will overshoot the backspace key and hit the ‘insert’ button instead, sending me into overwrite mode. And that’s pretty trivial.
Quite honestly, using my middle name in a first name - middle initial world is a much bigger nuisance than being a lefty in a right-hand world.
It’s actually more complicated than that. For one thing, it depends on the kind of music you want to play.
Also, there are basically three ways to ‘play left-handed’: one way is to simply flip a right-handed guitar upside-down. Another is to reverse the strings on a right-handed guitar. Lastly, you can play an actual left-handed guitar. As we discussed in this thread, there are pros and cons to each way. Guitar playing is not done completely with one hand (like throwing), but uses both hands for different functions (like batting), so it’s difficult to say whether playing lefty helps or hurts.
Since most of the hindrances become less important the longer and more seriously you play, casual lefties may be more inclined to get frustrated and quit (and FWIW, most lefties I’ve heard are better than average, but that may be prejudice, since I am one).
To the OP – I definitely do not consider left-handedness to be considered a disability. It helped me as a guitar teacher (it’s like looking in a mirror for a right-handed student), and I can amicably refuse access to my instruments to drunken pickers in bars “Sure you can play it, pal – uh, it’s left-handed, that won’t be a problem, will it?”)
Too bad all your empirical data is missing, so you can’t prove your point. I am the only lefty in my immediate family. I had one grandparent who was left handed, and I didn’t see them much as a child due to the distance, so how the hell did I “LEARN” to be left handed. I have tried many times even as a child to write with my right hand, but it wasn’t natural, and was hard. If I didn’t have some innate tendency to se that hand, why was it so much easier. As to the whole feeling special thing, I didn’t feel that way, I did however feel very different.
Nope. Just sinister.
But it’s not necessarily a slam-dunk that guitar is going to be easier for a right-handed person to play, correct?
That’s interesting. It was a long time ago, but I’d swear the scissors we had in kindergarten were cheap plastic ones that were completely symetrical, so I would expect them to function identically whether used right or left-handed. Did you have scissors with contoured handles in kindergarten? I’m goofing around right now with an ordinary pair of scissors I bought at a drugstore (also symmetrical). They seem to work fine left-handed.
The typical kindergarten scissors used prior to the invention of the plastic ones (and still used in many school districts) were the blunted scissors made of stamped metal. Part of their safety feature was that they did not have a true edge on the blades. The blades were slightly curved and the “normal” pressure of the hand when the thumb and forefinger were closed forced the blades together in a similar shearing action to the “wire cutter” at the inside of a pair of pliers. If held in the “wrong” hand, the pressure of the thumb and forefinger forced the curved blades apart rather than together. Thwy actually manufactured left-handed scissors to address the problem for left-handed kids. (And we righties could no more cut with those scissors than the lefties could cut with ours until we got old enough to figure out how to push the blades together instead of squeezing them in the natural way.)
Coming out of lurking mode for this one. 
I’ve had a fascination with handedness for quite some time. My mother made sure to raise me knowing that being left-handed was not common and that I’d have some problems in the world. She has an unusual appreciation for it because her mother is left-handed and there were a lot of things that were backwards to her. For instance, my grandmother had a pencil sharperner mounted upside down which made it difficult for my mother to use. My grandmother and her brother were both left-handed (though her brother was forced to be right-handed which set him back a few years in school), but none my mother’s siblings are left-handed. In fact, the left-handed gene (if it exists) skipped a generation and both my sister and myself are left-handed (2 of 5 children).
I don’t consider being left-handed as a disability, but it definitely puts us at a disadvantage in many things. There are probably a ton more things that left-handed people use awkwardly that right-handed people would never figure. Actually, I imagine many left-handed people don’t know they use these things awkwardly since it’s all they’ve ever known. When I started researching the topic, some of the things I read about amazed me. Things as simple as tape measures, cameras, and even more obscure things like boomarangs are all biased for right-handed people.
Personally, I like being left-handed. Not only does it make me more unique, but it gives me a different outlook on things. I have a greater appreciation for things that right-handed people might take forgranted. I was ecstatic the first time I found a left-handed spiral notebook at Office Max. Most of my friends couldn’t understand my reaction.
However, I do think awareness of left-handed people needs to be raised somewhat. There are still a lot of people who try to “cure” their child’s left-handedness because they believe it will give them an easier life. A lot of schools, while getting better, aren’t equipped for left-handed people. In kindergarten we had probably about 30 right-handed scissors and one, dull pair of left-handed scissors that us lefties all had to fight over. I eventually just gave up and learned how to the other scissors. Desks in schools are the big one. Lots of lefties are accused of cheating because we have to turn sideways to write in these desks efficiently.
The thing that annoys me the most is how manufacturers are. Left-handed products are extremely hard to find in stores. I’ve gone to many places, but have yet to see a left-handed can opener. The sad part is when you do find left-handed products, you are charged double or more. I’ve been looking for a computer desk that has more room on the left-side, but none have been nearly as affordable as one that is built for righties. (Computer desks normally have the place for the mouse and excess room to write on the right side. I end up putting my drink on the edge and knocking it off quite often.)
That’s awfully verbose for my first post here, but you’ll have to forgive me. This is a topic that really interests me. If you’re looking for some good links about left-handedness, I suggest:
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gauche!: Great compilation of reseach done by an anthropologist at Indiana University
Anything Left-Handed: The best left-handed store I’ve found online. - Rosemary West’s: Tons of links for anyone interested on learning about the topic themselves.
When I talk about feeling special, it is not merely lefties, but the whole myth of left handed people being more creative, etc. This is particularly unsupported. When talking about this with coworkers very recently, I asked if there was anything scientific about brain hemisphere dominance and personality. This lead to googling, which lead to the discovery that not only is that theory way suspect, that it’s nothing like settled among scientists that handedness is inborn.
People can argue they have always preferred their left hand, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that anyone can learn to use either hand, and have done so throughout history, either due to society or injury or whatever. If it is clear that any person without a disability can develop either hand, and the ability to do things with a hand is dependent only on whether or not they have learned to use that hand and developed the muscles, it certainly diminishes the sense that one hand is naturally better.
I use my right hand, but if I were to lose my right hand, I could, like millions of other people in that situation, learn to use my left hand. If my left hand is capable of doing everything my right hand does, and the only difference is that I’ve developed my right hand, then what is right handed about me? Only that I’ve learned to use my right hand. Handedness is almost entirely learned, since you can develop either hand to do anything you can do with the other.
And I stand by my position that the bigger myth… that your preferred hand is part of some kind of “brain hemisphere dominance” with suggested stregths and weaknesses… is complete malarkey, even though it is widespread. There is nothing supporting this. And while few lefthanded people have mentioned it to me, I definitely believe that almost anyone who claims it is true is a lefty. For some lefties, it becomes an identity thing.
I would doubt that you could find anything in the way of standardized testing, percentages of people in professions, or anything else to prove that overall left handed people are more creative and right handed people are better at math.
Fencing, boxing–any sport wherein an individual faces another and handedness can alter tactics, have a greater propotion of left-handers than the mass population.
I still await your peer-reviewed scientific journal scitations for your claim that left-handedness is completely and totally learned and not the least bit heritable.
Isn’t that something like asking me for scientific proof that there are no ghosts?
Extensive googling from reputable sites basically reveals that scientists don’t really know anything about handedness… whether it is inborn or socialized, or why people would be left handed. It makes for interesting reading if you have time, which I do not at present. However, this was the article we were looking at at work:
http://druniverse.wsu.edu/QandA.asp?questionID=934
What I stated is that there is no evidence that handedness is really inborn… I think reflection on general knowledge will lead to the conclusion that it is, in any case, almost entirely learned. Whatever preference you born with, the fact remains that you are fully capable of developing either hand, which fact I’ve pointed out a few times and has not been refuted. If you can develop either hand to full ability, what is ___-handed about you? Nothing but what you have learned and developed. To say a person is “really left handed,” when they use their right hand (which claim by a coworker started the discussion) is meaningless when you reflect on what handedness means and what evidence there is for handedness.
You are wrong. It is most certainly inborn. A child of only a few hours old hasn’t “learned” anything, let be about hand preference. My son used his left hand for reaching out to his nurse, to his mother, to everthing such a little baby reaches out. We didn’t grab his little arm to make him do that, you know.
My daughter used her right hand. We didn’t grab her little arm to make her do that either.
As for myself: I used my left hand for everything and also started writing with it. Yet I was teached to use my right hand for many things, writing included. Which gave me in fact some real advantages. When I write Arabic or an other language that goes from right to left I do that with my left hand. Yet I can also do it with my other hand when needed. For the others I can use my right hand whenever I find that convenient.
I disagree. My experience is that although I can use my right hand for right to left languages - in texts who also have right to left quotes, for which I use similarly my left hand - I feel much more comfortable and relaxed when I use my left hand. Comes to this that my dyslexia seems to be influenced by me using my “wrong” hand. (Don’t know if there is someone around who has an explanation for that.)
Simple things like handling a PC mouse both right or left are no problme. A little more complicated - like using scisors - most definitely are.
Don’t tell me I was “teached” to use my left hand for those, because then I shall refer you to my teachers and the grey hairs they got by trying to force me into that.
Using your right hand is something cultural where I am born. Although my family was not all that supportive of such beliefs and superstitions, my teachers most definitely were and they got support of my uncle to teach me how to use my right hand, because as he told me: We don’t live in an isolated box.
Because of this cultural reality my son also needs to learn how to eat with his right hand and is also teached how to write with his right hand among other things.
That shall not change his left handedness at all.
I agree with the posters who claim that in certain sports it is an advantage.
It is in my opinion also an advantage on the instrument I play (violin). I remember that my teacher asked if I was left handed a few minutes after the start of the first lesson.
Salaam. A
You are correct. In fact, as mentioned in the thread I referenced, they have been a number of famous guitarists (Glen Campbell, George Van Eps) who are/were left-handed people who play(ed) the guitar right-handed.
Well, given the irrefutable evidence of emotional assertions backed by anecdotal evidence, how can I but change my position? :rolleyes: