A Right Look At the Left!
On the occasion of International Left-Hander’s Day on August 13… A rightie looks at the lefties…
August 13 is being celebrated the world over as the “International Left-handers Day”.
Right handed greetings to my left handed friends….
The left and right are really two complementary sides. However, the treatment meted out to the left is often far from complementary. It is often very confusing, and sometimes difficult, being left handed in a right handed world. The word “right” by itself, besides denoting a “side” also has a connotation of correctness; this makes everything NOT right , as being wrong. And so , many times, those preferring the left hand , and displaying “left handedness” end up suffering.
Even language is partial. You do not appreciate a “left handed compliment”; the words meaning “left” in , say French and Latin are “gauche” and “sinister”, which is as bad as it can get; however, the words for “right” are an exemplary choice : from the French “droit”, we get the English word adroit, and Latin for right is “dexter” (from which we get such words as dexterous), all very positive connotations.
I have a nephew who was born and spent the first 25 years of his life in India. Somewhere around the time he was 6-7 months, his grandmother’s sharp, about-to-develop -a-cataract eye noticed a distinct preference for what was called preferring the “wrong hand”. In India, hands and their usage in everyday life is sacrosanct. The left hand is used for activities related to getting rid of body waste and cleaning oneself thereafter. The right hand is used for eating, conducting prayer activities, intellectual activities and the like. A family discussion ensued. Twenty years before, this would have been a crisis situation with people designing ways and means to get the kid to turn right handed. Luckily, better sense prevailed , and the child was allowed to grow up with his natural proclivities.
Then one fine day, when he was eight, a special teacher was selected to come teach the child the Indian percussion instrument, the “tabla”. The teacher was aghast. The tabla consisted of two differently pitched percussion drums, and the main one, the actual tabla, MUST be played with the right hand. Strong will prevailed over the boys natural tendencies, and to this day, 20 years later, the boy plays the tabla, right handed.
One has heard about the use of force in changing the “handedness ” of a child , leading to a sense of diffidence in the child, occasionally manifesting as stammering.
So one wonders as to what is this concept of left handedness, what does it imply, how advisable is it to be tough on such a child about changing, and how do children react to various levels of compulsion, about changing the “handedness”.
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Post CommentBilly the Kid
On May 26, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Very late comment here. I stumbled upon this entry and thought I’d better say something, because while this saluting is all very nice, I’m getting tired of the way southpaws get stereotyped. (Actually, I’m very close to being ambidextrous myself, but I think it’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other). They are not a separate species, you know.
The fact is, most of these “differences” between right-handed and left-handed people are due to a combination of random statistical fluctuation and publication bias.
The reason is that “handedness” is something that is very easy for researchers to ask about. So they do, routinely. Now, out of numerous studies, in all of which subjects are asked about their preferred hand, some will just happen to show a difference in some variable between the left and right-handed participants. Studies that show a positive result are much more likely to get published than those that don’t. This is “publication bias” and it bedevils epidemiology and other forms of research relying on statistics.
The effect is magnified when we move from scientific journals to the mainstream news– which is ONLY interested in research that it can sensationalise (journalists seem to love the idea that someone’s whole personality and destiny can be linked to one trivial characteristic). Basically, any research that the public actually gets to hear about will be only a tiny fraction of what’s been done in a given field and may well be unrepresentative.
One day both scientists and journalists will get sick of left-handedness and move on to some other minority trait. Then you can expect to hear that studies have “shown” a link between any number of things and having blue eyes or using a MacIntosh. Or maybe they’ll go traditional and study attached vs detached earlobes– back in the Victorian age, the former were reliably “proven” to be associated with criminality.
Let’s get this straight: the vast majority of left-handers are completely normal people, and are just as healthy as anyone else. As a matter of fact their life expectancy has been pretty well established as being the same as that of right-handed people. There was an infamous study years ago that claimed they die nine years earlier– this was immediately shown to be fatally flawed. Other studies showed either a.) no difference, b.) greater longevity for lefties or c.) only a slightly higher rate of death due to accidents– NOT illness. (This was one of the rare circumstances where studies showing no result actually got published). Unfortunately, despite being thoroughly discredited, the nine year gap figure gets bandied about to this day.
Oh yes… come to think of it, I believe Stanley Coren was one of the authors of the flawed study in question– which is often quoted as a classic example of bad science. Seems he’s still pushing his bandwagon. In fact, while left-handedness can occasionally be caused by brain damage, it is usually an hereditary trait. If this is the same guy, he’s tried to make his career out of “proving” that left-handedness is actually a defect, whose sufferers are sickly, die early, etc. I wouldn’t call him the most unbiased source around.
So what differences are there, REALLY? Well, you right-handers do, in my experience, tend to have slow reactions and limited visual imagination and spatial awareness… Not only that, but most of you seem to have only one effective hand (whereas I’m practically ambidextrous, like I said). And– this is the one that really gets me– you can only read in one direction! I really don’t know how you poor guys cope with life… but then many of you seem to have an uncanny grasp of spelling and place value. It must be some consolation to you, given the terrible difficulties you all face. Yes, you dexters are so different and special! Did you know many, many, famous and creative people have been right-handed? I salute you!
Seriously… does anyone really think just one trait can define a person? Everyone is an individual. Not only that, but everyone belongs to a statistical minority in one way or another. Maybe it’s the colour of your hair. Maybe it’s your ethnicity or your religion. Maybe you’re shorter or taller than most. Perhaps you have some minor ailment or other? Whatever it is, whoever you are, the other ninety or ninety-five per cent of the population always has the option of making that one thing the measure of a normal human being. Then they can do studies on you and write well-intentioned articles about how special and different and courageous you and all the other people in the whatever-it-is “community” are.
In fact, someone could be busy researching the difference between “people like you” and “normal people” right now. Nice thought, isn’t it?
Billy the Kid
On May 27, 2008 at 1:27 am
Oh… and despite what I’ve chosen to use as my screenname here, Lefties are NOT vastly more likely to commit murder than other people. The following contains one of the most slanderous implications I have ever heard anyone make about any group whatever:
“Turns out that murder rates in countries and the proportion of Lefties in their population have a correlation. While one needn’t look apprehensively at the next Leftie one meets, consider the fact that amongst the Dioula of Burkina Faso in West Africa, where the murder rate was only 0.013 murders per 1,000 residents each year, they found only 3.4 percent of the population were left-handers. However, studies from the Eipo of Indonesia, show 27 percent of the population is left-handed, and surprise, surprise, there are three murders per 1,000 people each year.”
Again, studies of this are usually completely worthless. “Studies” like this have “shown” everything you can think of… once. Then no-one can reproduce them. You just can’t take something like that seriously.
You need to develop some critical faculties, my friend, if you want to keep on with the article-writing. Next time, think before you make wild accusations against whole groups of people. (In case you don’t realise, what you are saying here would require the overwhelming majority of murders to be committed by left-handed people. This is certainly not the case.)
So, let me repeat: left handed people are not brain-damaged. We are not sick. We are not disabled. We are not short-lived. We are not, repeat, not, a bunch of violent criminals. On the other hand, we’re not an elite group of visionary geniuses either. In fact we’re not a “subculture” at all– we’re just regular people. Left-handedness is a normal variant trait. Ask your doctor next time you visit. (Unless he’s Dr Stanley Coren, who apparently has an axe to grind. I think a southpaw must have beaten him up in school or something.)
Thandagar, I know you meant well, but really, I think an apology is due. This is my address: dawnfire@spacelink.com.au
I’m waiting.