Is being left-handed a "choice"?

Great Debates
21

Some of my older left-handed cousins were forced to use their right hands by their parents and schools. When the grew up they stopped using the right hand and switched back to using the wrong hand. And it’s not enough that they insist on using their wrong hand. I have no problem with that. What bothers me is now they have special rights. There are stores and companies that cater to these abnormal deviants. Schools now have to have special desks just for them, even if there are none of these deviants in the class! There would be quite an uproar if someone opened a store that just catered to normal right-handers.

Why can’t they just use normal scissors and pencils?

Oooo. That’s good.

Virtually yours,

DrMatrix - If you’re not right, you’re wrong.

22

I wouldn’t mind left-handed people so much if they’d just quit flaunting it in our faces. You know, the way they pick up things or lift things. The way they write. Why can’t they just do these things at home so the rest of us don’t have to run off and barf all the time?

I think people should be aware of the dangers, even in their own neighborhoods. Our son wanted to play softball once, and we thought it would be a good idea. He said the coach just came up to him at school and asked him to play. We didn’t think this was so odd at the time until we went to our son’s first game, and saw the coach writing some notes. You guessed it! Left handed! How could we have been so blind? Later, we learned that not only had he recruited our son, but that he had recruited lots of other right-handed boys as well. Luckily we got there in time before our son was brainwashed and stigmatized for life.

23

AAAAUUUUGGGHHH!!!

I didn’t mean to show my real sig in my last post. I blame the left mouse button.

Virtually yours,

DrMatrix - If you’re not right, you’re wrong.

24

It’s not your fault, Dr. Matrix. I think we can safely blame their pervasive influence in modern times. Wasn’t Hitler left-handed?

25

I’m not a Dextrist, BUT, why do lefties allways have to flaunt their handedness? I mean, we know you’re left-handed, why do you have to tell us all the time. They really shouldn’t post to right-handed threads, either.

As long as they do it at home, behind closed door, I don;t care what hand they use. As long as I don’t have to see it.

26

How can anybody seriously think we would choose this way of life? Have you ever tried to buy a left-handed crescent wrench? Or find lefty golf gloves at a resort? Did you know that southpaw baseball gloves never go on sale? Huh? DID YOU? You’d have to be a moron to “choose” our orientation.

How would you like to spend your life reaching across to open doors, or standing backwards at the circular saw station in shop class while the other kids laughed at your plight? And you just try riding a motorcycle with the brake and clutch on opposite sides from what feels natural. I bet you’d be over the handlebars in a second!

I’ve known I was a lefty since I could pick up a spoon and feed myself. When I was younger I hid my handedness out of shame. I let people think I was uncoordinated just because I couldn’t hit well from the wrong (there, I said it! Wrong! HA!) side of the plate or roll my spaghetti properly. But now I realize that left-handedness is as much a part of me as my love of Frank Sinatra. And if anyone, even my parents, can’t deal with that, that’s their problem! I now wear my watch on my right wrist with pride!

Feh! on all you right-wing bigots

27

Manny, wait! It’s never too late!

I’ve heard of successful treatments of people like you. Have you tried one of the boot camps, or maybe one of the shock therapy programs?

Come stay with us a while, and you and I can do right-handed stuff together. I’ll help you. I know how it is, honestly. I was left-curious at one time. I’ve been tempted before to reach for things with my left hand, not that I actually ever did it, but I have fantacized about it. We all have. Remember that memory is tricky. You say you’ve been left-handed since you could pick up a spoon, but maybe you don’t remember a funny uncle or weird cousin who handed that spoon to you. Think about it, okay?

Please, Manny. Don’t give up yet!

28

Other countries do not have the same lefty problem that the US does. A Japanese friend of mine had a lefty sister. Luckily, their “right”-thinking grandmother refused to let their parents encourage this deviancy, and insisted that the girl be brought up as a righty. It was difficult, but eventually she learned to use the correct (or “right”) hand.

This is probably why the crime rate in Japan is so much lower than in the US.

29

I’m trying to keep my temper here, Lib, because I know all you righties have a whole “love the lefty, hate the left” thing that you try to do, but…

I’m now happy in my lefthandedness. I’d no more become a righty than you would give up your, well, right arm. I found a watch that fit nicely, I reversed the doors in my apartment and found a community of fellow-lefthanders with whom I feel at home and whom I love.

Why, I don’t even dribble pee on my pants any more, even though the zipper is on an unnatural side for me!

Why can’t you righties just accept me for who I am? You say I “flaunt” my handedness. Well, sure I might sit at the far left of the table, but that’s just to protect you from my elbows. I might pick up an item in the store with my left hand, but how is that different from right-handed people “flaunting” every time they can change the channel and still see the TV? (Thank Ghod for remotes, BTW, so that particular form of discrimination is a thing of the past.) It’s not like I run around making left turns on red or anything.

30

Yeah, it’s called amputation.

I’m really getting sick of this. I shouldn’t even have started this thread. I mean, you lefties have no shame. We’re all willing to help you use the right hand, but you refuse. It’s like you’re just doing this for attention.

That’s just because you’ve never done anything the right way.

You aren’t yet! But before you know it, we’ll have to make exceptions so that you can turn left on red.

31

Manny, manny, manny. [sigh] It’s okay. Really. I know that you see what you’re doing as “normal”. That’s because someone somewhere in your past abused your trust. It’s not your fault.

Look, if it’ll help, I’ll tell you a little story.

I had a college roommate who was, well, left-handed. At first, I was shocked, and tried to get a dorm room reassignment, but I was too late. He was a nice guy (kinda like you!), but due to my raisin’, I did keep sorta one eye (my right one, of course) on him. We talked for a bit, and never once did he bring up the subject of his handedness. Needless to say, that impressed me. Unfortunately, it also made me let down my guard just a bit.

That night, I was just about to drift off to sleep, when in the dark shadows, I saw him get out of his bed and come over toward mine. I was tired and groggy, and thought I was dreaming anyway, so I didn’t move to do anything right away. But then I felt him touch me. He was placing one of those little exercise balls in my left hand. I wanted to resist, but somehow it all felt … I dunno … strangely lurid and forbidden. I think that maybe deep down, I wanted it.

So, I squeezed. Just a little at first, and then as I looked up at his silhouette against the moonlit window, I started squeezing harder. The little exercise ball felt so good in my left hand, and I began to caress it with my fingertips, twirling and pinching, gripping and feeling. Before long, I was panting heavily as the little exercise ball started making squishy sounds from the sweat of my left palm. All the while, my roommate stood beside the bed, speaking in quiet whispers, “That feels good, doesn’t it… Yeah, man, you want more, don’t you…” Suddenly, he threw back his head and began to cackle like a witch who had gathered up children for her kettle. I heard the echos of his filthy, lascivious laughter fill the darkened room.

Suddenly, I came to my senses and flung the little exercise ball out of my hand, and jerked myself off … I mean up … out of the bed. “Look,” I told him. “Whatever you do is your business, but don’t be makin’ it my business.” He fell to his knees in shame, and begged my forgiveness. We had prayer together, and read a Jack Chick tract.

Every night after that, he would sneak over to my bed and place the little exercise ball in my right hand. So see, there’s hope for you too, Manny. Gotta run, but I’ll check back with you later.

32

If there is anything right in this sinister world, this will all show up in Threadspotting.

33

Last Night at the April meeting of Southpaws Anonymous

ATREYU: Hi, my name is Atreyu, and I am a southpaw.

GROUP: Hi, Atreyu!

ATREYU: Um, I’m the first lefty in the family going back at least three generations on either side. My brother is about a year and a half younger than I am. I confess that my first antidextrist act was to convert him to the Left Side when he was five.

[GROUP moans. One person is heard to exclaim, “Goddamn!”]

GROUP LEADER: How did you do this?

ATREYU: Same way I converted my best friend in the first grade. I switched my brother’s scissors in his school box with a lefty’s shears.

GROUP LEADER: Does your brother know you have done this to him?

ATREYU: [looks down at the floor, mumbles something]

GROUP LEADER: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.

ATREYU: No, he doesn’t.

GROUP LEADER: And why haven’t you unburdened your sin to him? Is it because of guilt? Shame?

ATREYU: He recently purchased a set of lefty golf clubs. They’re harder to find and more expensive than the “regular” kind. He would kill me if he knew I was to blame for making his life a sinister hell. His handwriting is so awful, it looks like freakin’ Arabic.

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #1: Atreyu, you know you can never achieve peace in your life unless you seek forgiveness from those you have wronged.

ATREYU: [nods]

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #2: Is there anyone else you have greatly wronged?

ATREYU: Um, let me see. There was that right-handed person I was sitting next to one time in a cafeteria in high school years ago. I bumped my arm and elbow against his so often while we were using silverware that he moved to another table.

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #2: Did you ever apologize?

ATREYU: No. Why should I?

GROUP LEADER: The first step to healing yourself is to acknowledge your mistakes. Because of your sinister behavior, another person was forced to alter his life. This person was simply trying to eat his meal, and you were making his life miserable enough that he had to relocate elsewhere. Doesn’t that concern you?

ATREYU: Now that you put it that way…

GROUP LEADER: Anything else?

ATREYU: [hesitates]

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #3: Don’t be afraid. Anything you say will be confidential.

ATREYU: Um, has anybody here heard of The Leftist Manifesto?

[Stunned silence.]

GROUP LEADER: You wrote that?

ATREYU: Yes.

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #4: Jesus wept. I can’t believe it. You know, it’s punks like you who give us handedness-challenged people a bad name.

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #5: What the hell were you thinking?

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #2: My kid read that thing on the Internet, and she’s started trying to write left-handed ever since!

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #1: My left-handed uncle read that, and he started a riot in an Office Depot that didn’t stock any left-handed spiral notebooks!

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #3: My wife read that two weeks ago, and she can’t stand to see me writing left-handed without apologizing all the damn time!

ANONYMOUS MEMBER #6: There are some things in this world we can’t help. I think your problems go way beyond our group’s capabilities to help. You need a professional, man. You’ve clearly got issues.

GROUP LEADER: I agree. All those in favor of revoking Atreyu’s trial membership in S.A.?

GROUP: Aye! [many right hands are raised]

GROUP LEADER: Opposed?

ATREYU: [sub]nay?[/sub] [left hand tenatively raised]

GROUP LEADER: Sorry, Atreyu. You’re out.

ATREYU: Why?! I thought you said accepted anyone who’s left-handed.

GROUP LEADER: We do, especially if they’re smug about it. But we’ve decided that, although you’re not incurable, your rehabilitation is going to require something on the order of divine intervention.

ATREYU: I don’t understand! I did all the orientation homework you asked me to do. I even read the “Right-Handedness for Dummies” book all in one sitting.

GROUP LEADER: Really?

ATREYU: [nods]

GROUP LEADER: Even the chapter on improving your handwriting with your proper hand?

ATREYU: Especially that one.

GROUP LEADER: Prove it. [takes out piece of paper and a pen] Sign your name here. If your handwriting looks better with your right hand than your left, we’ll know you’ve learned.

ATREYU: [signs the paper with his left, then his right hand; looks at the result]

GROUP LEADER: [examines the result and looks at Atreyu; shakes his head]

ATREYU: Aw, shit. [leaves meeting room]

GROUP: [murmurs a bit when they witness Atreyu using his left hand to open and close the door]

GROUP LEADER: Just remember, we can’t save everyone folks. There are some who are doomed to remain hopelessly left-handed, forever gauche, eternally sinister. We should pray to the Higher Power that Atreyu finds the help he needs, and becomes a normal citizen again. Now, on to our next order of business. I see we have a motion here to boycott baseball games where left-handed pitchers are used…

34

Lib, I’m still trying to see your motives in a good light, really I am. So I thank you for your concern.

First things first: Your story about your roommate breaks my heart and angers me all at once. He was wrong to do what he did; no self-respecting southpaw would try to take advantage of someone while he is sleepy – it’s gauche. But the fact that you so easily and successfully ‘converted’ him tells me that he was not really of the sinisterhood anyway. He was probably just experimenting the way so many people do at that age. He probably flirted with either Hayek or Marx or even both, too, no?

That said, your story made me kind of hot. Would it be OK if I changed it a little bit and posted it to my Sinister Fantasies newsgroup? Even though we would never do such a thing in real life, we have fantasy lives like everyone else, and I’d like to share that one.

About my upbringing. Sure, I was abused, but not by lefties. My mom used to regale me with tales of how the nuns used to slap lefties with a ruler to get them to conform. From the very first days of kindergarten, teachers would say, “Your handwriting would be so much better if you could see it as you write – try it this way,” and place the pencil in my other hand. T-Ball coaches looked at me funny; my first coach wouldn’t even put lime on the lefty side of the plate. Every time I had to use the scissors with the weird green plastic on them, I was reminded that I was ‘different,’ and that different was bad. The looks I got from my art teachers I carry with me to this day. And because I don’t want to make people cry, I won’t even tell you about what happened the first time I picked up a trumpet and tried to get my left fingers to work the valves.

I used to consider these adults cruel. But now I realize that they are scared. They are afraid that I am going to convert their children to the sinisterhood, or make them change how they live their lives.

I’m no threat to anyone. I want to go to church just like everyone else, and if I don’t get the seat on the far left, I’ll cope. I demand no ‘special privileges.’ As for their kids, if they are lefties, I don’t have to convert them. And they’ll be happier if allowed to live their lives out from under the shadow of the right-arm conspiracy.

Can’t we all just get along?

35

Manny, it isn’t as if we haven’t tried to get along with you people, but it seems like the more concessions we make, the more you want. We’ve given you shift, control, and alt keys on both sides, haven’t we? Didn’t we give you shirts with a sleeve for your left arm as well as your right? Haven’t we allowed you to vote in most presidential elections?

But I’m afraid it’s the fanatics among you that are making it difficult for the rest of you. You’ve already appropriated parts of our language and bent them to your own ends. “Sinister” used to be a perfectly good word that we could use to describe anybody, no matter what their handedness. But now you people, your people, you know, people oriented toward the east when they face south, wear the term as a badge of honor. We can no longer say to our buddies, “Man, I feel like doing something sinister tonight,” because we might lose their friendship forever.

Manny, try to think of it from a scientific point of view. What sort of a left-handed population has natural selection produced? You’re a tiny minority that can technically reproduce, but it isn’t likely that you will because your sperm swims counter-clockwise. That’s why, when you masturbate, it’s almost always your left hand that gets messy.

I’ve done all I can to help you here, but the rest is up to you. If you’re going to blame your mother, your uncle, and, for heaven’s sake, the nuns, when the decision is clearly yours, there’s nothing we can do. Remember the prodigal son, Manny. Whenever you decide that your shame is more than you can bear, whenever you stop pretending that you feel okay, whenever you can admit that sinister is a bad thing, come on home.

36

In my high school, one of the students decided that it would make an interesting science fair project to try to determine whether handedness is hereditary. Every member of the class was asked to supply the handedness and eye color (as a control) of their immediate family. It was a small town and one member of the class was a member of a family whose name was not to be tarnished. Any way, this particular class member had beautiful blue eyes, just like her parents and every other member of her family, save her brown-eyed brother. Mutation :rolleyes: was suggested before the experiment was quickly abandoned.

Results were inconclusive.

Virtually yours,

DrMatrix - If you’re not right, you’re wrong.

37

We righties rest our case.

38

Times have changed for us lefties since the days we had to buildthis to keep our persecutors at bay.

The central tower has a tight spiral curve that rotates the opposite way to the vast majority of spiral stairways.
This means that a right handed attacker fighting either up or down the stairway has his swordarm movement restricted by the central pillar whereas the lefthander can take swipes and yet gain some protection from the same central pillar

Upset one lefty and you upset us all, and we look after our own so there don’t you know, see what centuries of oppression has made of us, and quake in fear!!

MWAUGHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!

and Lib I surely expected so much more of you with a handle like yours, I am so dissapointed.

39

YOU LEFTIES ARE A SLAP IN THE FACE OF EVERYTHING GOOD AND DECENT. YOU’RE KIND MAKES ME SICK. YOU PRETEND TO BE REASONABLE, BUT YOU’RE REALLY TRYING TO CONVERT US ALL. WE’RE NOT FOOLED YOU FING LEFTIES. WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE AND YOU’RE GONNA BURN,BURN,BURN.*

40

As a slightly interesting (and incredibly little known) aside, the effect of furniture construction had an unexpected effect in the architecture of defensive structures.

Before 1517 it was not the custom to have your castle fitted with tight spiral staircases as the wooden chair,was a heavy, cumbersome and large affair and, along with the Great Hall feasting benches, was a real bugger to get around corners.

Staircases had to be very wide and had a very gentle curve, so that the planks used to form the upstairs furniture could be bent around them on their way to the higher floors.
The technique invloved steaming the huge 2" thick oak planks for hours until it became pliable enough to be bent.
This pliability only lasted for a short time until the wood cooled so speed was of the essence.

Unfortunately the staircase was also a focal point of the castle and as these became grander and larger the inevitable happened, some of these planks in the greatest houses had cooled too much before it had reached the upper floors,and were stuck fast.

This inadvertantly led to the fashion of having wooden panelling all the way up the stairway walls of the greatest houses and can still be seen as an expression of municipal power and pride in many city halls around the world today.

In 1517 a little known German craftsman Knur unt Spell succesfully tested his new cutting edge technology seating device for the first time.
It was made from relatively thin, turned pieces of wood formed in a frame where it longditudinally stressed either in compression or tension, this made the new seating device small and light.

He announced to the world his great invention but, as is often the case, his idea was not greeted enthusiastically, though it was refined and its market potential was exploited some time later by Baron Wilhelm Gatte-soft.

Poor Knur assumed that he must answer for his lofty pride in his invention and took it to his local church but left it by the door having not plucked up the courage to go inside and confess.

Histoy records little more than this except to note that a well known advertising bill poster, on passing the doorway of Wittenburg Castle Church seized his chance and used the new technology to place his “messages” in a prominent place on the door.

Having completed his task Martin Luther then foiled the best efforts of the local clergy to remove his material by the expedient of taking the high tech seating system home with him.

History regards this as one of the greatest poster marketing campaigns of all time.

Mrs Luther still uses the device in her husbands original manner in her kitchen when she has to stretch to reach the cookie jar on the top shelf.