Thunder Dog - Michael Hingson [73]
In at least one case, it would seem, the problem of the left-handed is not just a side effect of the fact that the world is constructed for the right-handed but a real, inherent weakness. When the left-handed person writes with ink (the ballpoint pen was a blessing, indeed), his hand tends to smear the ink as it drags over what he has written. Of course, he can hold his hand up as he writes, but this is an inferior technique, not to mention being tiresome. Upon closer examination even this apparently inherent weakness is not really inherent at all but simply another problem created by society in its catering to the right-handed. There is no real reason why it is better to begin reading or writing at the left side of the page and move to the right, except that it is more efficient and comfortable for the majority, the right-handed. In fact, it would be just as easy to read or write from the right to the left (more so for the left-handed), and thus the shoe would be on the other foot, or, more precisely, the pen would be in the other hand.
The left-handed have always been considered inferior by the right-handed. Formerly (in primitive times—twenty or thirty years ago) parents tried to make their left-handed children behave normally that is, use their right hands. Thereby, they often created trauma and psychiatric problems causing complexes, psychoses, and emotional disturbances. Today (in the age of enlightenment) while parents do not exactly say, “left is beautiful,” they recognize the rights of minorities and leave their left-handed progeny to do their own thing.
(Parenthetically, I might say here that those who work with the blind are not always so progressive. Parents and especially educators still try to make the blind child with a little sight read large type, even when Braille would serve him better and be more efficient. They put great stress on reading in the “normal” manner and not being “conspicuous.” They make him ashamed of his blindness and often cause permanent damage.)
But back to the left-handed. Regardless of the enlightenment of parents and teachers, the ancient myth of the inferiority of the left-handed still lingers to bedevil the lives of that unfortunate minority. To say that someone has given you a “left-handed compliment” is not a compliment to the left-handed. It is usually the left hand that doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, rarely the other way around; and it is the right hand that is raised, or placed on the Bible, to take an oath. Salutes and the Pledge of Allegiance are given with the right hand. Divine Scripture tells us that the good and the evil shall be divided and that, at the day of final judgment, the sheep shall be on the right hand and the goats on the left, from whence they shall be cast into hell and outer darkness forever and ever. The guest of honor sits on the right hand of the host, and in an argument one always wants to be right. No one ever wants to be left behind.
Whether these uses of the words “left” and “right” are subtleties of language reinforcing the stereotype and bespeaking deeply ingrained, subconscious prejudice, or whether they are accidental, as the “normals” allege, who can say? It may simply be that the left-handed are supersensitive, wearing chips on their shoulders and looking for insult where none is intended.
It is hard to make this case, however, when one considers the word gauche. The 1971 edition of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, says: “gauche . . . left, on the left, French . . . lacking in social graces or ease, tact, and familiarity with polite usage; likely or inclined to commit social blunders especially from lack of experience or training . . . lacking finish or exhibiting crudity (as of style, form, or