I don’t recall it ever being an issue in my life but Mrs. Gadaí’s mother was denied employment in the 1970s due to her being lefthanded. I was born in 1981 so by the time I was in school I wasn’t instructed to use my righthand but my aunts were forced to, under threat of corporal punishment, to use their righthands for writing. So did any lefty dopers ever suffer discrimination?
I was born in 1983, and no. Mostly just good-natured ribbing and/or fascination.
Which isn’t to say that being left-handed isn’t a liability.
Not exactly. In second grade, I would write to the middle of the page with my left, then switch to my right hand. After a week, my teacher finally slapped me and told me to choose one. I was in second grade in 1953. I chose the left, so, she wasn’t that happy.
In kindergarten, my teacher wanted to switch me from writing with my left hand to writing with my right hand. My mother was not pleased and made that displeasure very evident to my teacher who allowed me to continue writing with my left. I eventually dropped out of kindergarten (since attending kindergarten was not mandatory at that time) because I couldn’t sleep during nap time and my teacher would be livid that I wasn’t asleep. This would have been 1962 because I started when I was 4.
I was just discriminated against by Google, which didn’t think I could handle the real definition of “citeogs” and opted to show me pictures of “cute dogs” instead.
I feel patronized.
Never had a problem about being left-handed though.
I was in elementary school in the 70’s. No real discrimination, but sometimes disparagement. Like the teacher or coach was so irritated because they had to take the time to show me how to do something differently. I was lucky that my first grade teacher was a lefty and made sure the several lefties in the class got a good start at writing well.
Born in 1949 and, surprisingly, no one ever tried to make me switch hands.
Many things are designed for righties but I’m adaptable and can use my right hand for whatever is designed for it to have to use. Worst thing in school was smearing my writing because lefties hand goes over what they just wrote.
I do get smug satisfaction though when I’m behind a right-handed person in the drive-through ATM who has to unbuckle and practically hang out of the car to use the ATM with their right hand. 
(think about it)
No discrimination or being forced to write with the other hand, but in 6th grade a nun told the class that left handed people like me were the spawn of Satan. Born in 1967.
My mother (born 1933) and son (1986) are both left handed. My mom has beautiful handwriting. She pushes the pen across the paper instead of hooking her hand around. I ended up being a little ambidextrous because she taught me to do some things as a lefty.
My son decided he was a lefty when he was still in a high chair. I offered him a spoon one day and he started to put his right hand out, pulled it back, and stuck out his left.
Neither of them had problems with someone trying to get them to switch. And they’re both artistic, creative people. Although it’s not as bad as it used to be, my son sometimes has problems with opposite words, like he’ll say beef when he means chicken, up instead of down, etc. Okay, beef isn’t really the opposite of chicken, but I swear it took him years to remember the difference. And I’ve always wondered it it’s a consequence of being left handed.
I worked inventory counting for about a year, with a large calculator hanging from my belt. The south-paws in our group complained that it was awkward to use a right-handed calculator, while I quietly used it with my left hand no problem (I am right-handed, so left-handed ten-key makes sense for me: one hand for the calculator, the other for the pencil).
I’m ambi. Teachers in 1969 (born 63) apparently hated that. Had to choose a hand to write with. My handwriting looks atrocious with either hand. L.A. CA
Coaches never had a problem with me. They loved seeing me throw, bat, swing, shoot, etc… with either hand. Some of them would really get into analyzing the motions of an action to see how it would work either way. By the time I was into school sports, I was living in southeast Texas
I am also dyslexic.
Don’t know if the two are related…
My father, born in 1928, probably would have been left handed. But when he began first grade, in a one room school house on the flats of Nebraska, the teacher forced him to write with his right hand. She didn’t have time for “sensitivity” or “diversity”. As a result my dad’s handwriting is cramped and ugly looking, but legible.
My grandfather, in the '30s, was forced to write with one hand behind his back. If he was caught using his left hand he was beaten by the teachers and he the hand would be tied. He never told me how they tied his hand though, and now I sort of wonder.
My first grade teacher (this was in 1960) told my parents she wanted to switch me from left to right hand. This did not set well with my left handed father. She never bothered to show me the correct way to hold a pen/pencil, thus I have the lefthand hook. My next to oldest niece is left handed but she was taught how to hold a pen/pencil and has great penmanship where as I have the hand writing of a serial killer.
I always kind of resented my first grade teacher. However, when I graduated from college there was a blurb in the local newspaper about the students who were graduating from my college. (Small town newspapers will print any and everything!) She saw it, looked up my parents phone number and called. I just happened to be there and spoke to her. It was a very strange, yet cool thing for her to do I thought. What? This is MPSIMS, right?
In the mid 80s, my boss told me that I should make my daughter right handed. I gave her a look that implied that she had three heads. This boss had a lot of really odd and superstitious ideas.
I don’t think that my husband was ever discriminated against because of his lefthandedness, or my daughter (other than by my boss, who had very little access to my daughter, so had little opportunity. I know that my maternal grandfather was switched over. He managed to break his arm while he was in the first or second grade, and his teacher took that opportunity to switch him.
My mother was left handed and born in 1931. Her teachers tried to make her switch hands, but her father insisted that she be allowed to write right her left hand. She had beautiful handwriting.
StG
No, it isn’t. Even though I do have problems telling my left from my right sometimes*. Most lefties that I know have no problem with opposites. my husband, who is a righty, is awful. I often have to translate for him, when he’s tired.
Has he been tested for dyslexia?
The chicken/beef part may be due to never having seen the respective animals, meat is meat.
- When I was in basic training in the Air Force, they made me carry a rock in my right pocket, so as not to kill anyone by running over them. :smack:
My school asked my parents if they should teach me to write with my right hand. Since my father was made to switch and ended up with both illegible handwriting and a stutter, this idea didn’t go over well. Can’t say I was ever “discriminated” against, but I had to figure out things like how to hold scissors by myself.
I’m cross-dominant; was forced to use the right, as the left was “the Devil’s hand!” (I wondered what the heck did Satan want with all those unpaired hands and why did we have a hand we weren’t expected to use, but the nun didn’t seem to be in the mood for theology so I didn’t ask)
This affected my Phys Ed grades: turns out that if you’re left-footed, you should high-jump and vault from the other side*, and in team sports there are positions which are better for righties or for lefties. It’s not like I would have been good at it in any case, since I had a bunch of other small physical problems that complicated things and which got disregarded.
- When four of us were told, by the replacement teacher, to jump from the other side because “you may not be left-handed but you’re left-footed”, the differences ranged between 20 and 60cm. We all went from D to C or B.
A classmate who got switched at a different school told us about getting the hand tied to the back of the chair. They had those desk-chair things, where the desk has two legs, the chair has two legs, and there is a bar joining both; since he couldn’t move the chair forward, he had to lean forward a lot in order to reach, unlike the other kids who’d sit on the edge of the seat.
My second grade teacher (in the late 60s) tried to switch me over. When I refused, she gave me bad grades in handwriting instead. While my writing was and is not great, I was far from the worst in the class.
After that I was pretty much on my own figuring out how best to do things. I ended up teaching myself how to use scissors right-handed since left-handed scissors sucked so much. When eating I use the knife right-handed and the fork or spoon left-handed - no switching over as some people do. When prepping meals or carving meat, though, I will use the chef’s knife or slicer left-handed. And I when I use an X-acto knife, that’s mainly done left-handed as well, though I can switch over if a curve or an angle is too awkward to do otherwise.