• Crabhands@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    The first time I picked up a crayon, I used my left hand. My parents were concerned but waited it out. After watching me use my left hand the next few times they decided to convert me.

    I was brought to a special Sunday school service where right is right. They started with drawing, then moved on to writing. Eventually they worked on my instincts, by throwing things at me, at random, to ensure I used the right hand to catch. I was slapped with a yard stick in the knuckles whenever I used the wrong hand.

    Leftiism exists. Parents think they are helping but it’s caused all sorts of problems in my life.

        • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfOP
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          1 year ago

          Which is strange given that so many world-class renowned inventors and artists are all left handed

          • Magnetar@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            I’d be careful trying to deduce something from that (to my knowledge not too studied) factoid. It could (pure speculation) also be, that children growing up with the freedom to use whichever hand they wanted at a time when that wasn’t generally the case also had other freedoms like developing their creativity.

        • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If you’d like to know a whole lot more, here’s a Wikipedia page that could probably use some editing and reorganization but has over 80 references showing bias against lefties throughout history

          A sample,

          On March 8, 1971, The Florence Times—Tri-Cities Daily reported that left-handed people “are becoming increasingly accepted and enabled to find their right (or left) place in the world.” The Florence Times—Tri-Cities Daily also wrote “we still have a long way to go before the last vestiges of discrimination against left-handedness are uprooted, however.” The frequency of left-handed writing in the United States, which was only 2.1 percent in 1932, had risen to over 11 percent by 1972. According to an article by The Washington Post from August 13, 1979, a University of Chicago psychologist, Jerre Levy, said: “In 1939, 2 percent of the population wrote with the left hand. By 1946, it was up to 7 1/2 percent. In 1968, 9 percent. By 1972, 12 percent. It’s leveling off, and I expect the real number of left-handers will turn out to be about 14 percent.” According to the article by The Washington Post from August 13, 1979, “a University of Michigan study points out that left-handers may not be taking over the world but…7 percent of the men and 6 percent of the women over 40 who were interviewed were lefties, but the percentages jumped to well above 10 percent in the 18-to-39 age group.” According to the article by The Washington Post of August 13, 1979, Dr. Bernard McKenna of the National Education Association said: “There was recognition by medical authorities that left-handedness was normal and that tying the hand up in a child often caused stuttering.” In Japan, Tokyo psychiatrist Soichi Hakozaki coped with such deep-seated discrimination against left-handed people that he wrote The World of Left-Handers. Hakozaki reported finding situations in which women were afraid their husbands would divorce them for being left-handed. According to the aforementioned article, an official at the Japanese Embassy said that, before the war, there was discrimination against left-handers. “Children were not trained to use their left hand while eating or writing. I used to throw a baseball left-handed, but my grandparents wanted me to throw right-handed. I can throw either way. Today, in some local areas, discrimination may still remain, but on the whole, it seems to be over. There are many left-handers in Japan.” In a further article in The Washington Post of December 11, 1988, Richard M. Restak wrote that left-handedness has become more accepted and people have decided to leave southpaws alone and to stop working against left-handedness. In an article by The Gadsden Times from October 3, 1993, the newspaper mentioned a 5-year-old named Daniel, writing: “the advantage that little Daniel does have of going to school in the '90s is that he will be allowed to be left-hander. That wasn’t always the case in years past.” In a 1998 survey, 24 percent of younger-generation left-handed people reported some attempts to switch their handedness.

    • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My grandma got her left-handedness beaten out of her by the nuns. Paragons of virtue, the whole lot of them, right up there with Teresa.

      • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfOP
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        1 year ago

        I have seen lefties get in on their hand and I always wonder why they don’t turn the paper and write towards themselves. That was the hack I learned from early. It also solves the notebook ring problem.

        • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Yes, I know some people who do this and it’s easy if you do it from early on, but learning it later is like relearning writing altogether. It ain’t impossible but neither is it easy

    • Batman@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I flip my whole notebook over and use it back to front. Had a friend buy me one made that way for lefties once as a gift, it was actually really nice to have the cover face the right way for once!

    • SIGSEGV@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I had a left-handed friend in high-school that just oriented his notebook with the rings on the right (180 degrees rotated).

  • ScrivenerX@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I use scissors exclusively with my left hand just to point out to any lefty around that you don’t need to buy special scissors.

  • Gsus4@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    And who could forget granny’s: when you’re left handed, “YOU’RE THE LITERAL SPAWN OF SATAN” ok, dear?

  • Norgur@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I agree with all but the last one. From my experience, I’m the only one NOT noticing how anyone writes while I get “oh, you’re left-handed” constantly.

    But the smudging part reminded me of something that happened to me:

    I had a maths teacher who always had one of us do the homework on one of those overhead projector foil things and show them in front of class. I had a geometry task and would always smear the rewritable pen with my palms, or mess the lines up because I had to hold my hand awkwardly high. He did make me do it over and over again because he thought it was sloppy. My mum tried to talk to the teacher and the principal, that I as a lefty kind of faced an uphill battle there, so having me re-do it when I wasn’t able to do it the first time was not really going anywhere. The teacher only told her that I needed to learn ways around my left-handedness. So my mum had me do the homework with a permanent marker. No smearing anymore. The teacher even had a smug face on and was all like “See? You can do it after all”. That smugness was gone when he tried to clean up the foil. No one said that he had to like the ways I found to deal with such BS.

  • neutronst4r@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    The second one is stupid though… The rings get in the way 50% of the time regardless of handedness. If you are right handed, writing on the back of the page sucks. If you are left handed, writing on the front sucks.

  • TheSlyFox@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Every time I do something wrong or I’m clumsy my mother blames it on “it’s because he’s left-handed” been this way for 36 years now.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      When you write you accumulate graphite dust or ink onto your hand. Even if you lift your hand between words, the movement of your hand resting on your previous letters makes it happen.

      • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Doesn’t that turn the point of that panel null though? I thought that the point was that you get your hand dirty because, when writing from left to right with your left hand, you’re more likely to stomp over what you’ve already written.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It is advantageous in ancient combat though. When everyone is carrying a shield with their left hand and their sword on their right hand, the leftie can strike their relatively unprotected opponent’s right shoulder, unless the opponent is in formation and has an ally to its right.

  • Instantnudeln@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    Even tho I am right-handed, I can relate to the top left pic. For some reason, I started eating like a left-handed person when I was little and now it’s weird to do it the correct right-handed way, so I won’t change it.

  • Madeline@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I solve problem 2 by flipping my notebook upside-down. Reading my notes back is a little more annoying but I’m not in physical pain while writing, so I consider it a win

  • QuazarOmega@lemy.lol
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    1 year ago

    Huh, was it just me always getting super dirty hands when writing despite being right-handed? I even thought it looked kinda cool with that metallized skin color