My youngest has been sinister since birth. When she was too young to crawl, just sitting in that rocking baby seat on the floor, we noticed whatever baby toy we gave her ended up in her left hand. We made a game of putting a toy in her right hand then watching to see her make the transfer. We didn’t catch her changing very often, but toys consistently ended up in her left hand.
Nothing about that bothered us. It was just her nature.
Mankind’s issue with left-handed people goes back so far it’s encoded in our language. To the left side was sinister, a left-handed person was sinister. To the right side was dexter, a right-handed person was dexterous.
The Romans thought the left-handed brought bad luck to others. Many Europeans expected left-handed people to be stubborn and lack morals. There are cultures today which still reserve the left hand for doing “unclean” things, the right for doing “clean” things.
There was even a religious basis for the prejudice. People interpreted biblical phrases like “sitting at the right hand” to mean the right side was the good side. The obvious implication was the left side is the wrong side. You can still find sects teaching left-handedness signals an inclination to evil.
In the Middle Ages, many knights didn’t learn the different approach to fighting against a left-handed swordsman. People thought lefties were cheating because they didn’t fight like nearly everyone. Even today we talk about the extra challenge of pitching to a left-handed batter in a baseball game.
All these sinister people were doing was not conforming to how the majority does things. It isn’t like they’d made a choice.
In 1905 it was common for parents and teachers to force their sinister children and students to be right-handed. Some succeeded in making it look like they were dexterous after all. Some were less successful. All of them had to work to overcome their nature and conform.
Not long before I was in elementary school left-handed kids were permitted to use their left hands, but otherwise conform with everything the way the righties were taught to do it. Some teachers even required every student to have the same position of the paper on the desk for handwriting practice. I saw odd hand positions among my sinister classmates as they found ways to both obey instruction while still meeting their own, unique needs.
Education for the sinister had completely changed by the time my youngest was in school. Lefties were met where they were. Their specific needs were recognized. They were different, but there was nothing to prevent them from doing things their own way while still fitting into their classroom and education. I assume teachers learned how to teach handwriting to a lefty as part of the education to become a teacher. It wasn’t called equity or inclusion, but educators adjusted to do a better job of including their sinister students.
I’m not left-handed, but I learned by paying attention to my daughter’s experience. During her elementary school years she worked at fitting in. Early on she might be apologetic about her difference. In those days I learned to be more empathetic for people who seemed different, in a small way, but were really quite similar to me. By the time she was out of elementary school, she stopped caring about being different, it didn’t impact anybody else around her. It was less effort to just be her authentic self instead of careful about what others thought.
In the course of about two generations we’ve managed to move from treating left-handed people as, well, sinister, to them being just like the rest of us in every way that matters. We moved from expressing concern to not caring about the difference. After all, nothing I do is changed by someone else being left-handed. If you aren’t watching for signals, it’s easy to not even notice the lefties among us. Some of us misinterpret and think we see a lefty when we don’t. Most of us just don’t notice. They’re simply living their lives.
The statistics are fuzzy, but something around ten percent of the population is left-handed. Most of them have no explanation for why they are left-handed. They didn’t decide to be left-handed, they just are.
There’s nothing to stop a left-handed person from fitting into just about any role in society. Dexter versus sinister doesn’t really longer matter. The left-handed have comfortably settled into being among us despite a minor difference. Enough time has passed that we don’t think the small difference really matters. It’s taken generations because of the strong value judgments that were attached to which hand you write with.
We have more groups of people who know something about themselves is different. Like the left-handed, most didn’t decide, they discovered. Despite the efforts of a few people, you can’t convert them back. It’s difficult to get specific numbers, but something around ten percent of our nation are LGBTQIA. Many of us treat these people as sinister but they’re really different in a small way that doesn’t matter in most social and work situations.
I’m straight, but I’ve learned from paying attention to my daughter’s experience. It is less effort to just be her authentic self instead of careful about what others think. Maybe after another generation these people will fit into our society perfectly well despite the judging and resistance they face now.
The difference shouldn’t matter. But some people are uncomfortable around people mislabeled as “sinister” when all they are is a little different.
—
iStock image
