I pretty much have carte blanche over at the food blog, and it’s been really fun coming up with ideas for posts. I LOVE what I do there. Once a month, for instance, I attempt an intimidating recipe, and talk about the process and results very frankly (risotto went well, mayonnaise not so much). But other than that, topics settled themselves quite naturally: Nadine, the other blogger (whose personal blog, Les Zimparfaites, is among the biggest parenting blogs here -cough, slightly humbling, cough) most often posts about recipes, tips and little discoveries she’s made; usually, practical, day-to-day stuff. I, on the other hand, like to talk about books, and places or events, but also, like it’s probably the case here, often veer towards the society/reflection/musing aspects. I talked about comfort food, and time for cooking, and raising good eaters, and the impact of social media on food companies, and pizza-as-a-vegetable, and Paula Deen’s diabetes. Anyways.
A few weeks ago I thought about discussing being left-handed (which I proudly am) in a right-handed world. Of course over there it had to be articulated around food somehow, so it ended up being mostly about the essential cooking utensils a leftie needs to survive in a kitchen. But while doing my research I came across a ton of interesting information and wanted to share it here.
So, only 7 to 10% of the general population is left-handed. This is constant across all cultures, and is also constant throughout History. They found cave paintings from 10,000 years ago, where primitive "artists" would blow paint around their recessive hand to draw a silhouette, naturally using their dominant hand to do so. And, about 90% of the hands represented are, yes, the left one. We’re the only species where this exists; while animals often show a preference for one side over the other, the division between both sides is roughly equal.
Men are twice as likely as women to be lefties. It is hereditary (I got it from my father, but sadly didn’t pass it on to neither of my children), and thought to be due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors (something that has to do with the level of certain hormones in the womb?). Your dominant hand is directly connected to the functioning of your brain; in right-handed people, speech, emotions and language are controlled by their left-side, and the opposite is true for lefties, like we’re a mirror image of you. This is only based on my very partial observation, but in the 12 years I’ve been working in the technical writing and translating field, I’ve noticed that the number of lefties among translators/language experts is disproportionally high.
Actually, not to toot my own horn here, but the number of lefties who accomplished remarkable things is also disproportionally high. Eight US presidents (for a total of 44) are/were for instance, including Obama, Clinton, Bush senior and Reagan. But, being left-handed is also associated with a significantly higher chance of autism, epilepsy, alcoholism, as well as schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Apparently has to do with the fact that these, like left-handedness, are also linked to unusual brain asymmetry patterns.
If you’re right-handed, you most most likely never realized how much lefties have to adapt to your world, on a daily basis, throughout their lives. But although this probably never occurred to you (why would it?), we are truly living in a world where NOTHING has been made for us. From handwriting (in the Western hemisphere at least), to clocks (and by extension to the clockwise fashion), from computer keyboards and mice, to about any kind of machine, apparatus, gear and device (including, but not limited to, musical instruments, sports equipment, tools, appliances) to most customs (table manners, hand shaking, walking on the street and crossing people, enter/exit doors, etc.) (For instance I never learned to properly drive a manual transmission; my right hand/arm just refuses to cooperate. But I think that I probably could have learned in the UK). It took me years to realize that I wasn’t actually that dumb and awkward; I was rather trying to cope with a world where everything was backwards.
Never mind how until recently lefties were punished, shamed and “corrected”, it’s language as a whole that stigmatizes us. In English, “right” means correct, proper, even trustworthy and sincere (also think about “righteous”, which adds a moral component). In French, “droit” (right) has pretty much the same meaning, but additionally Law and its principles are called “le Droit” (the same with German, “Rechts”). Back to French, “gauche” (left) means “clumsy”, and so does “maladroit” (literally, ill-righted).
Being left-handed is clearly, scientifically speaking, some kind of a human abnormality. (Many, many parallels have been drawn with homosexuality, which has fascinating similarities, but I hesitate to directly qualify that as “abnormal” (in the Darwinian sense re: gays don’t reproduce) because, obviously, I don’t think it is morally!) According to my mother, I showed my preference extremely early on, and at 6 months she already knew I would be a leftie –doctors usually worry about genetic defects or neurological damage in this case!
I am definitely odd. Worse than that, I love to be. It’s my quirk, my identity.
Actually, not to toot my own horn here, but the number of lefties who accomplished remarkable things is also disproportionally high. Eight US presidents (for a total of 44) are/were for instance, including Obama, Clinton, Bush senior and Reagan. But, being left-handed is also associated with a significantly higher chance of autism, epilepsy, alcoholism, as well as schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Apparently has to do with the fact that these, like left-handedness, are also linked to unusual brain asymmetry patterns. 
7 comment(s):
I am also proudly left handed! I hear that we recover more quickly from strokes because we are forced to learn to do things right handed. For instance, I now use a computer mouse much better with my right hand than my left because at work my desks are always set up in a right handed way. Not that I would ever like to prove that theory...
lefty here as well! some of the points you've made are familiar to me, but i'd never known that men are more likely to be left-handed than women are; fascinating!
i grew so sick of trying to find left-handed scissors at kindergarten that i trained myself to use the right-handed ones instead; now i can use knives with my left hand, but not scissors.
I love playing a game when watching films or TV and the character is writing something, to see whether an actor is left-handed. The proportion is huge.
Also, you forgot sinister, from the Latin for lefthand. So you lefties aren't just clumsy, you're creepy too ;)
My mom (who is a teacher) and the pediatrician both told me that, usually, kids "choose" left or right when they start hand writing. It is not uncommon for toddlers to draw or eat using both hands. My youngest daughter is 4 and uses both hands. But she clearly has a preference using her left hand to write her name.
We'll have to wait for him to write to be sure, but since he was about 6 months old, we suspect our 2nd son to be left-handed. For example, he eats mostly with his left hand, although if we present the spoon on his right, sometimes (but not always) he'll use his right hand.
So, I'm really interested in all those challenges I've never thought about, being right-handed, because I want to be sure that I can help him with the good (I almost wrote "right") tools and everything!
You'll be happy to know that in some areas, tool are designed to work well with both hands. In labs, I've used mechanical pipets with both hands (I used the left one to avoid overusing the right and lower my risk of developing carpal tunnel syndrome), and had no problem switching hands with most recent models. I was clumsier with my left hand at first, but after a while I developed a similar dexterity--oops, another word whose origin has to do with the right side!
Funnily enough, when I was little I used to want to be left-handed. My best friends were. :)
We learnt all about left-handedness on one of my linguistics courses. That's how central to brain and language development it is.
In sum: lefties are totally superior. The way your brains work wins. The end.
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