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Left-handed Persons Are Sinistral But Are They Cursed with Disorders by Birth?
Research into left-handed individuals may have explored an aspect of the brain and possibly the immune system that leaves them prone to illness.
If you prefer, there is one universally accepted bias/prejudice, and that is in the privileges afforded right-handed individuals. Take a moment and look around your home, office, public areas of accommodation, and even sports equipment. What do you see?
Everything is designed and made to suit the right-handed person. Try buying a left-handed baseball glove (the internet has helped solve this one) or a set of golf clubs or even kitchen equipment or musical instruments, all made for the right-handed but increasingly affording access to the left-handed. Despite these limitations, we have had three left-handed presidents; Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.
Early beliefs about the devil influencing the left-handed led to bizarre actions by teachers in schools. Children learning to write and who showed a propensity for using their left hand were subjected to unpleasant forced conversion. My mother, initially left-handed, had her left hand tied behind her back in school. Self-esteem for lefties was sorely damaged.
We now have one person in our extended family who is a left-handed medical professional. I remember him telling us how he had to find surgical instruments for his preferred hand. He wasn’t alone. Left-handed surgeons had previously faced difficulty searching out appropriate instruments.
Consider the realities of being left-handed in a right-handed world. Wouldn’t it be more likely to have accidents since they were forced to use materials not intended for them? You and I might be seen as awkward, but stupid and dishonest? A great way to resign a person to the far corners of any profession or life.
The left-handed are called clumsy, stupid, dishonest, and awkward and life is more difficult in a world made for others. But one researcher, Dr. Norman Geschwind, the father of behavioral neurology, found those who were lefties may have had something else, a disposition to certain disorders or symptoms. He also believed there might be an association with the immune system.
