Thanks for all your replies. It’s very interesting to see how widespread this practice is, and nobody seems to have a clear idea why it was done to them.
This is possibly the nearest you can get to a rational explanation. But even this doesn’t make much sense. Although there are a handful of tools that are marginally easier for right handers to use, there aren’t any serious disadvantages to being left handed.
As for being a minority, there are probably at least as many left handers in the world as there are Americans, and in any case we could well be the world’s least opressed minority. Generally the most oppressive thing that happens to us is to be forced to use the wrong hand.
What oppression could George VI have been expected to face?
These suggest that there is some religious aspect to it. Does anyone know of a biblical passage that prohibits left handedness?
I would still like to hear from someone who does insist children write with their right hand - whether they are a teacher or a parent, maybe they can shed some light on the issue. I understand that it may be a hard thing to own up to, but there are people on this board who aren’t slow to express far more illiberal ideas, so don’t be shy. I would be very interested to know what it’s all about.
I just tried that, and my left hand won. When I put my right hand on top, that felt weird. I’m right handed, always have been, and never was trained out of lefthandedness.
For those of you who had the left handedness trained out of you, have you ever tried learning to write with your left hands? I mean, if it feels odd and your handwriting could be better, wouldn’t it be worth the time and effort to start writing with your left hand?
According to Monstro’s test I’m left handed. According to Washte’s I’m left handed as well, though when I make my hands go the other way it feels only slightly weird. Perhaps I’m ambidextrous?
I do a lot of things with both hands, but writing I’ve always done with my right hand. I do hold my pencil ‘weird’ with my right hand. Always have, but I don’t recall ever being forced to used my right. Writing with my left hand just did a test I can write legibly, though it looks more like my 3rd grade printing when I do. If I hold it a little differently I can make it even more legible, it looks more like 4th/5th grade printing. So if I practice with my left hand I can probably get up to the proficiency my right is now.
And I seem to recall it being a myth that left handedness was ‘evil’ and ‘of the devil’.
The only mention of the left hand possibly being evil that I can find in the bible is Matthew 25:41-42 KJV Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: etc etc. All the rest I scanned appears that the left hand was holy. Priests used their left hands specifically for bendictions and such. (I used bible.com searching for ‘left hand’)
It is quite possible that people took that verse and decided that those who were left handed were the ones who refused Jesus and thus being left handed meant you refused Jesus in your life. So they had to ‘beat’ it out of you and bring you back to God. Just a theory. People take bible verses out of context all the time.
My older brother was trained to be left-handed. The doctors broke his collarbone and dislocated his left shoulder trying to get him out, and they told Mom he’d have nerve damage and probably never use that hand (or even arm) properly. So when the cast came off, she spent a lot of time trying to get him to use his left hand and arm. We think she must have overdone it, because now he’s left-handed but writes about like a leftie forced be right-handed.
How odd that you brought that up. I don’t know anyone else whom this has happened. At least not anyone else alive.
So, right now I’m 21 years old.
When I was a toddler, I showed certain signs of lefthandedness. Grabbing things with left hand, drawing. Since my mother traveled a lot, I was mostly brought up by great grandmother.
Mother tells that one day, when she returned from a trip (maybe month long) she finds her small child paddling happily around - left hand in a sling. Of course she panicks, wondering that maybe I broke a bone or something, storms to great grandmother…
“Well, she was lefthanded.”
“…?”
“In our family, NOBODY is lefthanded.”
Yes. Thank you. Not anymore there isn’t.
I used to be ambidexterous for awhile, but now it’s all gone. Righthanded klutz with hideous handwriting and no hope to learn to draw decently.
But really like to whine about it.
i’m fifteen and my dad switched me for “religious and cultural” reasons from my left to my right from the get go and i just found out and am now training myself to write type and do pretty much everything with my left hand like this i typed it with my left hand alone
I’m aware this is a zombie, but that finger-lacing test is crap. I’m completely useless with my left hand but when I fold my hands my left thumb always wins out.
I’m left-handed but write and use chopsticks with my right hand, because that’s how I was taught. My handwriting seems OK to me (if not great), and when I got around at some point to trying to write with my left hand, it was about as good with a bit of practice but much slower (since I wasn’t used to it) so why bother. Similarly I can, if I bother to, use chopsticks with my left hand, but my left hand and forearm muscles are underused for that purpose and it’s too slow to be worth my effort to train up on. Plus, the reason for the chopsticks handedness is practical: sitting next to someone eating with their right hand, elbows would crash and chopsticks might even lock
I do sports with my left hand - throw baseballs, shoot basketballs, bowl, hold a fencing foil, tennis or racquetball racket, etc., - as well as kick with my left foot. But at various points in my life I’ve been forced by circumstance to take instruction “as a righty”. One summer I played baseball with a borrowed righty glove for 2 weeks because I’d lost mine and there weren’t any other lefties, and I was too scared to tell my parents I’d lost my own (I’d only had it for 3 weeks). Another time, I took a couple of “introduction to fencing” classes as part of a group of about 20 people where all the foils were righty. I later enrolled in another class where I bought my own equipment and became a lefty (the instructor suggested I do this if I were serious about learning fencing, since lefty fencers often have a slight advantage). I don’t think the 2 weeks of instruction as a righty hampered me at all.
I got all excited when I saw Master Wang-Ka had posted and then a little sad when I looked at the date. Sigh.
Anyway, my sister was not forced to be a righty and she figured out the most comfortable way for her to write on her own. She ended up holding a pen the same way I do even though she uses her left hand. She’s the only left-handed person I’ve met who doesn’t curve the hand at all when writing. I know there must be others but I haven’t met them. She is 34.
My mom says I was left-handed when I entered first grade and right-handed after. I really don’t remember that, but I do remember never getting good grades in writing (penmanship). I also had a hard time learning which side was left and which is right- I still have to pause a bit to think about it sometimes, and I’m 51 now. I taught school for 26 years, and sometimes would unthinkingly pick up the chalk in my left hand and try to write with it. It may be that I’m really right-handed but mom had me using my left since she’s a lefty. My brother’s a lefty, and both of my sisters get their rights and lefts confused sometimes also.
I can’t say why people still do it, other than to guess that old habits die hard, but in the Christian world there used to be a pervasive association between evil/sin and the left hand.
I know a Japanese man who is left handed. He is about 35. He said when he was a child and would hold chopsticks or a pencil in his left hand, his mother would smack him. Hard. According to him, it had pretty serious repercussions on his emotional/mental stability. Did not sound pleasant.
Don’t these parents understand if they can just teach the child to throw a baseball with any kind of velocity, they’ll be rolling in money? Left handed pitching is a premium.
I heard it started among cultures that did not use toilet paper. Thus you would wipe your butt with the left hand, and reserve the right for everything else.
I do everything right-handed except grip for judo. There I am a leftie. Nobody forced me - I just tried it and found it gives an advantage, since most people are not used to gripping kenka yotsu where one fighter grips with the left hand on the collar and the right on the sleeve, and the other fighter grips the collar with his right and the sleeve with his left. I use the same left-leg forward stance for striking practice, which is orthodox for most striking styles (except jeet kune do), so it blends better for the transition from striking distance to grappling distance.
I was reading some mommy board, maybe a year ago, and there was a woman there asking for advice because her husband wanted to force their toddler to quit being left-handed. She wasn’t sure whether this was a good idea or not.
As far as I can remember, his rationale was that it was ‘weird’ and the toddler would grow up to ‘feel weird’ because the rest of the family was right-handed. There may have been more, but it was all at that level. No actual reason, it was just different, and different=bad.
I think at that point I collected my headdesk smilies and left.
I’m left handed. When I was in school they tried to make me use my right hand, but it just didn’t work. I can half way use my right hand to write, but it’s very unnatural and uncomfortable for me. I often got low marks for neatness in school because being left handed, my hand would drag across the pencil (and later pen) tracks I had on the paper, smearing them as I wrote from left to right.
My mom was born a lefty. Also red-headed. Also covered with psoriasis. Also in an area and time <early 50’s> where everyone <locally> paid to go to church, and you HAD to go to church. And church was just someone yelling at everyone at how evil they were and what they had to do to make up for it. She was considered to be the devil’s child from day one. She is still a leftie; she just never learned to write properly until after she fled home and went into foster care.
Out of her four kids, one is bona-fide left handed. She taught us all to write at home, and let lefties be lefties.
My handwriting was TERRIBLE, I mean, just awful, no matter how long I practiced. And I had to practice every day during the summer; it was just that bad.
Later on, when I tried new things, they were always instinctively done by me left handedly, and I always wondered if maybe I would have done better writing left-handed. It certainly could not be worse than my right-handed writing.
Thank GODS for typewriters and computers, holy shit.
My grandpa (born 1909) tried to make me use my right hand, but my parents didn’t care, so I didn’t have any trouble until I got into first grade, where the teacher yelled at me for using the wrong hand. I didn’t even get it, either with my grandpa or the first grade teacher, what the problem was! I would fiddle with it for a little while while they were watching me, but switch back after they left me alone. I have tried on occasion to learn to write right handed just for the heck of it. When I did it in school, I was told not to and write with my left hand because they couldn’t even read it. And that was when I took my time. To this day, if I write with my right hand it looks like I had a stroke while writing during plane turbulence.
