When somebody asks me if I am in my right mind, my immediate response is to give a slightly smug grin. You see, I am left handed. So, technically, yes, I am in my right mind. Moving on from the pedantry, this story is about my left hand and how it is discriminated against for not being right.
If I am discriminated against in my society, it is for possessing two attributes of nature. A womb and my being left handed. It began one fine day when my teacher told my parents that I used my left hand to write. Alarmed because it wasn’t the normal way, they set on a quest to make me write with my right hand. Ultimately, as all naïve subjects of coercion and conditioning, I began to write with my right hand. And still do. I am aware that I have the right to choose. But still I am conditioned to continue. Shaking off my habit of writing with right would take an immense effort which I simply am too lazy to employ.
My parents finally admitted their prejudice when I began to show signs of creativity. Suddenly they began telling everyone that it is only natural because I was left-handed. (Why exactly are people so interested in normalization of traits?)Also, I was clumsier apparently. Do any of the righties have any idea how hard it is for us lefties to navigate in a world designed specifically for you? Talk about oppression by majority. Even the scissors and my computer mouse are for righties. If I used my left hand for opening the refrigerator door, I will be disoriented just by getting it done. Sadly the modern world is designed for righties, not us poor ambidextrous beings who, in order to fit into the world, had to learn how to use both hands without a choice. But it is not like we complain about it; after all, righties are the majority. We have learnt how to live with our difference.
But what makes me amused is not the (im)practicality of my attribute, but rather the social ruckus associated with it. Since ‘left’ is associated in many cultures with everything evil or off, I am not allowed to do auspicious things with my left. Sometimes people ask me to give them money with my right when I do so with my left. Time and again I am asked not to serve food with my left hand. It is only by default that I extend my right arm for a hand shake. Every single thing that I do which is simply a part of my functionality is discriminated on the basis of being a leftie. A person who observes me can understand that I get irritated if I am holding the phone with my right hand for more than thirty seconds talking to someone or that I gesture more with my left hand or that I even am not comfortable brushing my hair with my right hand too long. It is a part of me. Yet am told again and again that that part of me is ‘inauspicious’. A tenth of the world’s population is left handed. There is no study to indicate that our society has any lesser proportion. This means that roughly more than a hundred million of us are struggling to fit into a society which wrinkles up its nose at lefties using the ‘dirty’ hand.
It also doesn’t help that most left handed people fall into a pattern of unconsciously fitting in and apologize whenever they very inauspiciously use their left hand. They have to realize that they don’t have to feel bad when someone asks them not to eat with their left hand. Like all majoritarian oppressions on individual expression, the identity of being left handed is slowly drained out and substituted with what is ‘right’. It stands out as yet another social construct which involves our body in which one half of it is considered unclean or sinister without any science behind it. Seems to me like human beings are designed to be hedonistic about the cultural relevance of their bodies, no matter what that part brings to the person as a whole.
Hence, I am unfortunately tempted to close this post with a very ‘hand-ist’ quote from The World’s Greatest Left-Handers: Why Left-Handers are Just Plain Better than Everybody Else by James T deKay and Sandy Huffaker: “Left-handers are wired into the artistic half of the brain, which makes them imaginative, creative, surprising, ambiguous, exasperating, stubborn, emotional, witty, obsessive, infuriating, delightful, original, but never, never, dull.”
And you try to make us fit into a crazy world by making us duller. Ironic.
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