Look at the data, scientifically!
In 1900, only about 3% of the population would admit to being left-handed. In the mid-1970s, it was up to about 11%. I don’t want to know what it’s like now, but being left-handed is clearly trendy, and if we just extrapolate from those numbers of an 8% increase in 76 years, I’d estimate that the population must be about 16% left handed today, and that the lefties will have completely taken over by 2800. We righteous righties are on the path to extinction! This is the real Great Replacement! Someone needs to alert Tucker Carlson and get the word out!
What I see is that left-handedness is causing global warming!
My Dad figured out, in his 50s, that he wasn’t actually right handed, but had been forced to write with his right hand growing up. He switched, but still doesn’t write great with his left hand, just better than the right.
I guess I followed in his footsteps, by not coming out as gay until I was in my 30s, thanks largely due to the oppression from the religious.
:)
Some hardcore Christian sects still think left handedness is a sign of being in league with the devil. So, like, hail Satan!
Clearly the media’s pro leftist agenda is corrupting young minds and turning good right handed kids left handed.
Clearly I’m way ahead of the trend, being a gay left-hander. Maybe I should have myself cryogenically frozen, so I can wake up in 800 years to join in with the worldwide gay (left) hand job orgy that human civilisation will inevitably ascend to become. A few years later we’ll probably convert into beings of pure rainbow light and become one with the cosmos. Ah, progress!
My father, born just over a century ago, was left-handed. I don’t know why the nuns didn’t beat it out of him. Half the boys in my family grew up left-handed, and none of the girls, which sure sets off “Mendelian genetics” alarm bells.
The mildly deranged penguin asserts “it” is obviously all a plot by the ambidextrous, to set the right’s tyranny against the left’s terrorists. I note she herself can eat cheese very well using either wing, either leg, and often just by diving on the cheese or running around vacuuming it up with her beak.
I’ve read somewhere that most left-handers aren’t as asymmetric in their preferences as most right-handers. Whether this is a result of continued dextralist privilege (which is still a pain with regard to handwriting, scissors and corkscrews, and was in relation to ‘phone boxes when there were such things – the ledge to support a bit of paper to write on was always on the right) or something more innate, I don’t know. Worst of all, our life expectancy is a few years less, but slightly compensating for that, we’re apparently less likely to lose language abilities after a stroke.
Back in the 80s when I was in grade school, my mom decided that I wasn’t “really” left-handed and tried hiring a tutor to train me to be right-handed.
This was, to say the least, wildly unsuccessful.
What about weirdos like me who write with their left hand, but play guitar/sportsball with their right? How sinister is that???
Many years ago some of my wife’s grad school classmates brought up the old claim that left handedness was the result of brain damage during birth. We explained that au contraire, with increasing head size during human evolution, the birth canal was simply inadequate and that brain damage during birth was the norm. Consequently, we lefties represent the damaged minority. Any increase in left handed press in recent years is likely due to improved medical care (or perhaps higher death rates among the damaged since healthcare is obviously going to the dogs.)
I am certain our thesis is as sound as anything in evopsych.
And I should add, as well researched too.
KG @9:
That idea seems to be based on a faulty study. Probably conducted by incompetent dexters.
UnknownEric the Apostate @11: The only thing I do right-handed is shooting a gun (rifle or handgun). That puzzled me for a long time, until I learned that my right eye is dominant.
My father–born in 1910–went through school when they tried to “convert” the left-handed to being right-handed. Didn’t work, of course. He would up sort of ambidextrous and a bit clumsy with both.
My wife–born in 1942–went through school when the kids were encouraged to use whichever hand they were most comfortable with. She’s left-handed, but thinks that if there’d been a bit of pressure towards right-handedness, she’d be ambidextrous.
If you want statistical outliers… My son, son-in-law, and one grandson are all blood type O-.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37423-8
A large-scale population study of early life factors influencing left-handedness
has some more recent statistics.
My grandmother was left handed. At school her left arm was tied behind her back and she was belted if she tried using it to write. All her children,i including my father were right-handed. My mother was ambidextrous. Both my sister and I are left-handed. She is younger than me and had a relatively easy path through school. I was never a neat writer but had no problems till i reached high school and was kept in after school on the first day by a particularly vicious English teacher who made me rewrite my work. Most of the teachers were tolerant of my bad handwriting. One reckoned I used a trained alcoholic spider and the English Master called it “the waltz of the fly in ink time”. One helpful maths teacher suggested I try using a fountain pen. It was a big improvement. It forced me to slow down a little to allow the ink to flow properly and resulted in me shaping letters better. I still use them and now have quite a collection of fountain pens. Mind you as I’ve aged and my joints seize up using a key board is my preferred option. I also began training as a teacher but had to give it up because I couldn’t meet the requirement of writing on the chalkboard with my right hand. The perverse logic of this was that the children would copy me and I would end up with a class full of permanently damaged left-handers.
Well I see I more or less refuted my own claim. I of course meant that those of us on the sinister side are the undamaged minority.
My father was also left handed, or so we think. He wrote with his right hand as taught in school, but hie played basketball and baseball was with his left.
I hit school just as teachers were told to let lefties be lefties and naturally no one had any idea how to instruct in writing with the left. Fortunately they dumped fountain pens before I got that far.
UnknownEric the Apostate @11
I’m the same way – write with my left hand, do most other things with my right.
Re: garydargan @ #18…
Heh… My father did field service engineering under military contract. We moved a lot. When I was in the 2nd grade, the district taught cursive in the 3rd. When I was in the 3rd grade, the district taught cursive in the 4th. (You can see where this is going.) When I was in the 4th grade, the district taught cursive in the 3rd. I skipped 5th grade (all the furor about the need for what we know call “STEM” caused by Sputnik I). So my 6th grade teacher decided Something Must Be Done About That. My handwriting was never the best, but it improved significantly after I took mechanical drawing in high school and learned to letter properly. It’s been going downhill ever since, though.
My father, on the other hand, had really beautiful handwriting, complete with a legible signature. Almost copperplate. But he graduated from high school in 1927.
Thanks Rob Grigjanis@14! I’m truly astonished the researchers did not think to correct for increased social acceptance of left-handedness – not a “subtle” mistake at all.
The rise in left-handedness is obviously caused by a conspiracy of the eskimos and Jews (the Bilderberg group is ambidextrous).
#20 @Springa / #11 @Eric
You absolute freaks. Obviously the right way to do it is to write rightie, swing leftie, and eat ambidextrously (Dad’s a leftie, Mom’s a rightie). (:
Somewhere, Ned Flanders is chuckling evilly.
#22: the same thing happened to me! We moved around a lot as kids, and I missed big chunks of the standard curriculum, including cursive writing. I was ‘rescued’ in 8th grade when I took a drafting class and learned how to print on the fly. It’s the way I still prefer to write.
Although my family moved a small number of times when I was in elementary school, I am unawares of “missing” any part of the standard curriculum, albeit I vaguely recall “repeats” (or at least being bored out of my mind because I already knew the subject). Even so, my cursive handwriting was horrible, and I’ve block printed for as long as I can recall. (One reason might be my father was an engineer and trained draftsman.) I have a vague recollection of an eight(?) grade teacher in a (fiction-)writing course asking me to submit my next story in cursive, and then after doing so, asking me to either print or type (I had learned touch-typing by then (on a manual! (before home computers) — one side-effect is I still tend to really pound the keys, albeit no longer expect jams)).
Around the same time, I obtained and learned to use a fountain pen, which is still, to this day, my preferred handwriting instrument.
blf @27:
Fountain pens plus the barbaric practice of writing left to right; a nightmare for lefties. Years of Lady Macbeth Syndrome (out damned spot, out I say).
Re: PZ Myers @ 26…
All the moving left me–for many years–with the ability to accurately mimic the accent of any conversation around me. I did make some efforts to drop the one I picked up in Abilene, TX, though.
If I wipe my butt right handed and perform other certain other pleasurable anatomical manipulations right handed in 1900 would I be considered right handed?
In the 1960s I learned to write left handed. So at least in the 60s and 70s I’m left handed.
Now I use my right hand to move the mouse around, so am I back to being considered right handed?
Hmm, there are a few things I can only do left handed, and a few others that work better right handed. Everything else is somewhere in the middle, most things work both ways, and I trained myself to use whichever hand is closer.
So, non-binary?
Rob Grigjanis@28, Good point! Or should I say “Good nib!”?
Sinister? How gauche!