Handedness - Social Stigma and Repression of Left-handedness

Social Stigma and Repression of Left-handedness

Left-handed people live in a world dominated by right-handed people and many tools and procedures are designed to facilitate use by right-handed people, often without even realising difficulties placed on the left-handed. "For centuries, left-handers have suffered unfair discrimination in a world designed for right-handers." However, as well as inconvenience, left-handed people have been considered unlucky or even malicious for their difference by the right-handed majority.

In many European languages, including English, the word for the direction "right" also means "correct" or "proper". Throughout history, being left-handed was considered negative. The Latin word sinistra meant "left" as well as "unlucky" and this double meaning survives in European derivatives of Latin, and in the English word "sinister.'

There are many negative connotations associated with the phrase "left-handed": clumsy, awkward, unlucky, insincere, sinister, malicious, and so on. A "left-handed compliment" is considered one that is unflattering or dismissive in meaning. In French, gauche means both "left" and "awkward" or "clumsy", while droit(e) (cognate to English direct and related to "adroit") means both "right" and "straight", as well as "law" and the legal sense of "right". The name "Dexter" derives from the Latin for "right", as does the word "dexterity" meaning manual skill. As these are all very old words, they would tend to support theories indicating that the predominance of right-handedness is an extremely old phenomenon.

Black magic is sometimes referred to as the "left-hand path".

Until very recently in Taiwan, left-handed people were strongly encouraged to switch to being right-handed, or at least switch to writing with the right hand. Due to the importance of stroke order, developed for the comfortable use of right-handed people, it is considered more difficult to write legible Chinese characters with the left hand than it is to write Latin letters. Because writing when moving one's hand away from its side of the body can cause smudging if the outward side of the hand is allowed to drag across the writing, writing in the Latin alphabet is less feasible with the left hand than the right. Conversely, right-to-left alphabets such as the Arabic and Hebrew are generally considered easier to write with the left hand in general.

With a fountain pen, left-to-right alphabets can be written smudge-free and in proper "forward slant" with the left hand if the paper is turned 45 degrees clockwise. This prevents the painful bent-wrist "crab hand" often seen in left-handed writers, and it permits a clear view of what has already been written on the current line. It is also possible to do calligraphy in this posture with the left hand, but using right-handed pen nibs. Otherwise, left-handed pen nibs are required in order to get the thick to thin stroke shapes correct for most typefaces, and the left-handed calligrapher is very likely to smudge the text. Left-handed pen nibs are not generally easy to find, and strokes may have to be done backwards from traditional right-handed calligraphic work rules to avoid nib jamming and splatter. These issues have been made almost irrelevant by the near-universal adoption of fast-drying ballpoint and gel pens for everyday use (pen nibs are now a specialty item rarely stocked by office suppliers), and the widespread use of computers and other electronic devices for communicative purposes.