You can thank the Romans’ adoption of the Bible for that stigma.
In Latin, sinestra means on the left side. Left handed people were referred to as sinister. After the appearance of Eve on Adam’s left side in accounts of Genesis, the Christian tradition finds instances of the left side being pinned to immorality. As a result, some time during the Latin Classical Era the definition shifted to its current meaning of evil.
Explanation: It used to be fairly normal for teachers in the US, at least, to ‘correct’ left-handed children by striking their hand or otherwise punishing them for using it for primary-hand tasks. My great-uncle suffered this bizarre form of correction as a child.
My partner suffered this form of correction in the late 80s.
One of my high school teachers became ambidextrous because of this.
They tied his left arm behind his back at a certain point because he just kept using it.
My Grandfather also had this experience and came out ambidextrous
Everyone is born right-handed. Only the greatest overcome it.
I was just talking about my first and second grade years today. It was 1977/78. Both teachers those two grades tied my left hand down and forced me to try to learn to write with my right hand. What it did was make my handwriting absolutely terrible. This was due to the fact that in the third grade they didn’t teach you that anymore and I never had any practice at it. My parents didn’t care it happened since my dad was convinced a left handed man just couldn’t match a right handed mans abilities. It was because the school nearly got sued by another students parents that they finally ended that bit of abuse. This is the southern US by the way. The place that is permanently out of step with decency.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. I grew up left handed in socal 90s and had a few people in my education try to correct it just by pointing it out but nobody forced me. When I was learning to write my name I would write it backwards and mirrored haha, brains are funny.
Knuckle rapping: for those naughty kids in Catholic school. And also lefties.
Write hand!
I grew up in the 90s and went to public school, so I didn’t have this experience. What I did experience was using the shittiest scissors in the classroom, and having to share it with 3 other kids because there was exactly one left handed pair.
Also lots of criticism about my handwriting.
Everyone knows the left hand is the sinister one…
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Source?
There is no source, you can easily google this. Its a combination of genetics, cultural factors, and maybe even birth circumstances, i.e. birth weight, sex, whether you’re a twin, could all be factors. But the web also says we really don’t know why there are less left handed people than right handed people. This person is a bozo spouting off misinformation, maybe to be funny?
Which is what I was trying to get them to admit.
A good troll never admits it.
Look at his profile and account name, he’s trolling.
In the original sense of the word from like 20 years ago before it got applied to a million other types of behavior.
I mean, that’s great and all, but with the huge rate of misinformation and intentionally disinformation today, people don’t really appreciate (don’t know if we ever did), trolling like that anymore. Hence the huge amount of downvotes.
I hear you but trolls are usually trying to get downvoted anyway.
Plus, trolling can be funny sometimes, when it’s done well. On the topic of being left handed, it seems pretty harmless to me. If they were trolling about political topics and such, that’d be much less funny and more problematic.
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For anyone even remotely considering this troll, left-handedness is polygenic (multiple factors).
Anecdotal: I have twins, and one was drawing left-handed from the moment they could draw.
