Why Doesn’t the Left Care About Lefties?

It is time, and past time, to speak of and for a group of people which the self-anointed prophets of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion have long ignored and silenced – possibly because it is hard to challenge a privileged group to which one belongs. Unconscious bias favours a system from which one benefits. 

I speak of the systemic Handism which shapes Western societies: the marginalisation and discrimination which Left-handed people must negotiate every day – disempowering shadows of historic, unacknowledged oppression.

Things may have improved since the dark aeons when children were caned or had their natural writing-hand tied behind their backs in order to enforce conformity to dexteronormative superstructures, or when Left-handedness was considered evidence of witchcraft. Research is needed on the stories of victims of this particular tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet oppression remains embedded in religious, linguistic and socio-economic structures. The Bible, for example, speaks prominently of Christ being seated at God’s “right hand”, clearly conveying the inferiority of the Left hand or Left side. This phrase was deliberately imported into the Nicene Creed, so that week by week churchgoers would enunciate – and internalise – the social (even ontological) dexteronormative hierarchy.

Our very language perpetuates this tyranny. The word chosen for the non-Left hand is ‘Right’, which also means good, correct, true, etc. The Latin word for the non-Left hand is ‘Dexter’, whence ‘dexterous/dexterity’ – skilful/skilfulness. And the word for someone able to write with either hand is ‘ambidexterous’ – ‘both-right’ (one would like to see a person successfully accomplish anything with two actual non-Left hands!) Meanwhile, a person with ‘two left feet’ is, obviously, a person who cannot dance.

And what is the Latin word for Left? ‘Sinister.’ Adopted by dexternormative Handist European civilisation to denote what is evil, menacing, not to be trusted.

Socio-economic oppression remains everyday. It is, apparently, acceptable to joke to/about/over a Left-handed person that ‘all witches are Left-handed’, and expect them to laugh at historic massacres. Too often, shops from stationers to sewing shops to cookware retailers claim to stock scissors or similar tools – but left-handed versions must be ‘specially ordered’. We reject this pathologisation of our manual orientation, in which – let us say it loud – we take PRIDE. But Left-handed people are still accorded no place on the Pride flag.

Shared and public computers have the mice placed on the ‘right’ side, and oriented to ‘right’-handed use. Even novelty coffee mugs are frequently designed such that the design is visible to the drinker only when held in the ‘right’ hand.

Just as the torment of Left-hand-hobbling was compounded by the imposition of pseudo-rational justifications – that it is easier to write from the Left of the page with the non-Left (‘right’) hand to avoid blotting (when fountain-pen usage was common) – so now economic justifications are presented. That ‘right’-handed people are in the vast majority, therefore it is not economically viable for businesses to present equal stock of Left-handed tools and accessories. That it would inconvenience the ‘right’-handed majority to have to re-set computer mice. Profit before people, and the convenience of the privileged before the survival of the oppressed, as ever with the capitalist, white, cisheterodexteronormative patriarchy.

What, then, is to be done? Systemic Handism must be first acknowledged and then dismantled.

• The deletion of Handist language from all religious texts is an obvious first step. 
• Manual orientation must become a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, allowing Handist indoctrination to be prosecuted and Handist jokes to be reported as Non-Crime Hate Incidents.
• Positive role models of diverse manual orientation should be more prominent on our screens, on championship podiums and in the corridors of power.
• Time in the National Curriculum should be devoted to learning and celebrating non-Western writing systems which do not run from the Left-hand side and therefore are less prone to co-option for Handist oppression.
• All businesses which sell manual-orientation-specific tools and accessories must commit to equal accessibility for Left-handed customers, and all employers to an audit of the manual orientation pay gap.
• Affirmative action. Once Left-handed representation is at 50% in high-status roles within academia, the civil service, Parliament and industry, Handist justifications based on majority convenience will disappear.

But Left-handed people cannot break free as long they must communicate within the paradigms of their oppressors. Language must be reformed. Either ‘right’ must be used only with reference to laterality, replaced in other contexts by ‘good’ ‘true’ ‘correct’ or ‘human entitlements’; or another term must be adopted to express non-Left laterality.

The Antihandist community debates different solutions to linguistic subjugation. ‘Non-Left-hand’ could be the most obvious replacement for the deeply evaluative ‘right hand’, analogous to ‘cisgender’, and bringing about equity through the actual reversal of previous hierarchic language. However, others have proposed ‘r-hand’ , or ‘dexter’, from Latin. The present author, in a spirit of generosity and unity, uses both ‘non-Left’ and ‘r/dexter’.

The most important thing, however, is the allocation of large funds – at least tens of millions per year – from government and charitable trusts to Antihandist research and creative projects, to be allocated to and managed by Antihandist and Lefthanded experts and creators. I do not say this because I am a Left-handed researcher specialising in this field, but because of my overwhelming passion for social justice.

Then, when r/dexter-handed people embrace their role as allies to the Left-handed, we can begin our perpetual journey towards a world where Handism is dismantled and diverse manual orientation is truly celebrated.