What makes people right-handed or left-handed?

I'm a lefty.

And, yes, I do think it makes me a bit more special than righties.

Proud Sinistra

All of the lefties I know are straight.

And I’m the first born son.

I'm a gay leftie. I know plenty of gay lefties.

I'm also the first born son.

And the first born grandchild on both sides of the family.

Bowie, Mozart, Cobain, Hendrix, Gaga, McCartney, Oprah, Gates, Henry Ford, Clinton, Obama, Jefferson (probably), DaVinci, Michelangelo, Van Gogh (most likely), Klee, Raphael, and then a shit ton of athletes.

We are your artistic and athletic and business and political overlords.

Bow down bitches.

Judy Garland was left handed.

R5 Don’t forget The Biebs!

Do Catholics still think lefties are evil?

R7 we regretfully disallow the Biebs into our club.

For reasons well aware to him.

Just writing, does that count?

R10 before we can allow you into the club, we need to know: Are you hung?

Please be honest. A true lefty wouldn't lie.

[quote]Do Catholics still think lefties are evil?

Not since JFK got his head blown off you 1963 cunt.

Lefties show telltale wear on the opposite side of their penis.

no they don't r13

^^^ fun at parties

MEGA FUN at PARTIES! Let me JACK YOU OFF WITH MY LEFT HAND!!!!

[quote]Do Catholics still think lefties are evil?

[quote]Not since JFK got his head blown off you 1963 cunt.

That’s a relief! It’s good to hear that Catholics have progressed, and no longer think that something you were born with is a sin.

Nobody is Catholic in America r7?

This is the problem with DL. Several posters never left 1932

The Catholic shit is dead in North America. The only thing that's keeping the Catholic shit alive in Britain is Polish immigrants.

^

R19 There’s a resurgence of trad-Catholic activists, politicians, and organizations in the U.S., funded by right-wing billionaires. They’ve played a pivotal role in fighting against gay rights and women’s rights in America since the early 90s.

Jesus Fucking Christ this is about left handed people. Period. You stupid paranoid fuck.

Let's just talk about left handed people.

I’ve heard that left-handed people have a shorter lifespan on average because they have trouble handling knives and other sharp objects. Can I have your stuff, OP?

10% of the population is left handed

[QUOTE]Nobody is Catholic in America [R7]?

I said that where, dear sir?

A lot of creative, intelligent people are lefties, but left-handedness has also been statistically linked to ADHD and drug abuse, which explains Judy Garland and R21.

Not in New England. or the West Coast.

Just a few old people left

Throughout human history left-handedness has been considered as sinful. It has been associated with the devil, weakness, female gender, unhealthiness, evil, something that has to be turned to a "good"--right side by force.

Leftie hands will all pull their owner to hell.

They hate us cuz they ain’t us!

Lefties rule.

I was right-handed, whether by my inclination or the inclination of my family to ensure that I used my right hand, "like normal people," but around age 8 I fancied the word ambidextrous, and practised writing and using my left hand. It was quite easy and now I wouldn't say I'm truly ambidextrous but ambidextrous-inclined. I can write quickly with my left hand though the handwriting is a little less refined than with my right hand. For a quick scribble I'll use either hand, whichever is closest to the pen or paper, but for a longer, neater exercise the right hand is faster and more legible.

The real pleasure of developing some use of my left hand was that it enraged my 12 years older, hothead brother. He was obsessed that everyone walk a certain way, swing their arms a certain way, held a fork a certain way (he was a HKLP in Nancy Mitford's language), use their right hand in preference to their left, and pretty much the family Nazi about everything.

The one particular disinclination of my left hand: jerking.

Lebron is interesting. He writes left-handed, but he shoots (free-throws, jump-shots, 3-pointers) right-handed (but obviously can finish around the rim left-handed). Similarly, he throws right-handed when throwing a football or baseball, and he golfs right-handed (badly).

[quote] The one particular disinclination of my left hand: jerking

As a friend I used to joke; it's like doing it with someone else.

^^tl'dr

It's just a thing

[quote]The real pleasure of developing some use of my left hand was that it enraged my 12 years older, hothead brother. He was obsessed that everyone walk a certain way, swing their arms a certain way, held a fork a certain way (he was a HKLP in Nancy Mitford's language), use their right hand in preference to their left, and pretty much the family Nazi about everything.

Jesus Fucking Christ if your fucking brother held you down and killed you so you would never ever would have posted on Datalonge.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Could he have just drowned you in the river?

What about your unfortunate siblings, r32?

[quote]They hate us cuz they ain’t us! Lefties rule.

Yes — righties are jealous because we don’t have to use special scissors, or fill in forms with the paper turned at a 90 degree angle. You are so lucky!

R29 It looks like your brother at R32 has followed you to DL. Will the torture ever end?

My brother and I are left handed, as was my grandmother, although she was made to change her writing hand in school.

And I don’t need special scissors or to turn my paper when I write, and I have excellent penmanship.

Don’t hate us cause you ain’t us.

What about us right handers who have a quirky way of writing?

For example, I hold a pen/pencil with my middle finger (as opposed to my index finger) and my thumb.

My early elementary school teachers repeatedly tried getting me to write the "proper" way, but I always reverted back to what felt comfortable after they walked away from me.

Left handers ruin every restaurant dinner when you're seated in a booth

I was born left handed. When I was 4 my mother started training me to do things right handed, starting with drawing. By 5 I had learned to print and I spent an hour a day printing with my right hand on a big chalk board she had installed in my bedroom. By the time I entered school at 6 I had been taught to write cursive and was fully writing right handed. During my first week in 1st grade I wrote a note to my teacher in cursive (which in the 50's was not taught until 3rd grade), and I still remember the shock on her face when she looked at my note. When it came time to enter 2nd grade my teacher told me I was going to go into the 3rd grade instead. I was not happy as I wanted to stay in the same class with all my friends. But I was not given a choice. Once in 3rd grade my teacher used me to help teach the other kids how to write cursive. I didn't realize until many years later that all she was interested in was making her job easier, but I got over it. In high school I had several classmates who would remind me occasionally that I had taught them how to write cursive when we were young.

My mother knew what she was doing.

You’re not special, babes.

First-born son, but with a twin sister. I'm left-handed, she's right-handed.

I’m gay

I’m left handed

I’m well hung 🍆

Proud leftie here. I turn by paper sideways instead of putting my hand across the paper, to avoid smudges.

How did your mother know you were left-handed, R39, if you only ever drew or wrote right-handed? Have you ever thought she was only training you to draw and write, and you actually WERE right-handed?

I mean, what were you doing before pre-school age to show you were left-handed? Embroidery? Having your guitar re-strung?

Both my parents (born 1938) were born left handed and were forced to use their right hands in school., and they never used the left hand again. They both had handwriting that would disgrace a drunken spider.

I have three siblings, and we are all right handed.

In elementary school, I turned my paper sideways to write. As an adult I realized I had stopped that without thinking about it. My quest has been to find pens with quick-drying ink. At the moment, I like Pilot Precise fine (as opposed to extra fine) points.

My father had very little to do with his family, so it wasn't until I was well into my teens that I met my uncle and his daughter, both of whom were left-handed like me. Nobody else in my family was.

R36, if you haven't tried left-handed scissors, you don't know what you're missing. You can cut wrapping paper with anything (though not as accurately), but if you were to turn your hand to dressmaking you'd see the difference pronto.

All I can say is that it was a hell of a lot more interesting to be left-handed in the 60s or earlier, when it was still considered taboo and degenerate. Tim Curry once said he enjoyed playing “left handed” characters (Frank N Furter, Pennywise, the Lord of Darkness, etc.) because they were much more intriguing than the status quo.

Apparently I was left handed and my parents switched me to right. My brother is also left handed, but they taught him to write with his right and left him to do whatever he wanted left handed. I'm a makeup artist, and he's a musician.

Oh yes, lefties should know that the Latin for "left" is "sinister".

Latin for “right” is “dexter.” The character Dexter Morgan is right-handed when he’s murdering other serial killers, but uses his left hand for other things, which I guess might be a reflection of his inner conflict.

[quote] How did your mother know you were left-handed

Because when I started using crayons as a toddler I always used my left hand. My mother said when they'd try to get me to use the crayon in my right hand I'd cry and switch back to my left hand.

R30, Lebron is probably like me - how I was taught is how I play sports. I throw a baseball right handed but I can bat right or left. He was probably taught as a kid by a right handed person.

Anything I learned on my own like embroidery or crochet, or tennis, I do left handed.

IMO, it’s easier for us lefties to adapt and use our right hands for stuff than it is for righties to use their left hand.

How old are you guys who were forced to switch to being right handed? I'm almost 50 and it was never an issue when I was a child.

r54, I don't remember, but i would have dreams that my right hand would be broken so I would be forced to use my left. My brother remembers, and was a precious child (apparently had a 160 IQ), so maybe 4 or 5?

precious=precocious

R54 I know lefties in their 60s who went to private Catholic K-12, and were converted to being right-handed by the nuns. I think Gen-X is the first to not be forcibly converted to right-handedness in the schools, at least in the U.S.

Haha, R35. You see what I was dealing with! Once a dickhead, always a dickhead.

I'm left-handed, the eldest sibling with ADHD-- my mom was left-handed til the Filipina nuns got to her.

I like seeing a leftie when he jerks off with his left hand.

Red headed lefties meet in fields at night

My dad was a lefty and when he went to Catholic school they made him switch hands. He became ambidextrous. He was a middle child and had a low genius IQ of 145.

My dad was a lefty and he went to Catholic schools in the 50s/60s and he never mentioned them trying to make him switch hands.

My mom told me her grandfather was naturally left handed and when he was in school in the early 1900s the teacher would tie his left hand behind his chair and make him write with his right hand. How fucked up was that?

my mother was left handed until she broke her arm. They then forced her to use her right hand which she did for the rest of her life. So how did that affect the brain?

[quote] How old are you guys who were forced to switch to being right handed?

Almost 50, eh whippersnapper? I'm soon to be 71.

My older brother is a red headed lefty.

I’m a salt n pepper headed lefty.

The green lefty scissors were always neglected and gummy.

I'm a lefty but I jerk off right handed.

It's not a terrible thing to use an unfamiliar hand for an activity. That FORCES the brain to create new neural pathways. More neural pathways = more intelligent. Neuroscientists have done hundreds of studies of musicians, particularly pianists, in which the research plainly shows that the brain, instead of using the familiar neural pathways (right brain going to left hand , left brain going to the right hand) has to work like crazy to create new neural pathways connecting the two hemispheres of the brain to one another. One of the accidental outcomes of that is that pianists, especially advanced pianists, are extremely intelligent as a group and tend to do well in every school subject. That being said, handedness is pretty hard-wired into us physiologically, and the old days of teachers forcing kids to do what was clearly unnatural for them was a terrible thing. .

God makes people right handed. Satan makes people left handed and horny.

My dad went to catholic school in the 1920s and the nuns hit his hand with a ruler if he tried to use his left hand.

They smudge the pen ink! Unless writing in Arabic it's useless!

Now, no one can write thanks to texting.

[quote] I'm a lefty but I jerk off right handed

I’m the opposite.

Your cut and paste skills suck donkey dick.

Lefty here, and I started using a computer mouse with my right hand because I didn’t know it was a handed activity. Now I’m stuck with it.

I'm in my 60s and it was never an issue in my childhood. We used inkwells till I was half-way through primary school. I never got decent marks for handwriting because you can't help but smudge fountain-pen ink when you're left-handed, but nobody tried to convert me. When we moved to ballpoint pens most of the issues resolved, and my communication skills soared when I was given a typewriter at the age of 10. Of course I was taught various sports, instruments and crafts right-handed, but because righties have no imagination when it comes to putting themselves in lefties' shoes, not because they thought it was morally wrong to be left-handed. If I wanted to reverse everything and go properly left-handed they thought it "looked odd" but didn't really care. (Of course, no amount of persuasion is going to turn the baseball diamond around so you're facing first base when you bat true left-handed.)

R75 reminds me, there are a lot of ergonomic mouses but it's ridiculously hard to get one shaped for a left-hander. I find this especially offensive since Bill Gates is a lefty. R75, why are you "stuck with it"? You can easily change your settings to allow you to use the mouse left-handed.

It's worth noting there is a spectrum of handedness. Some people fall closer to the ambidextrous mid-point, whereas a few people are extremely one-sided. If you can't kick a ball with your right foot, use a microscope with your right eye, or perform even gross motor skills with reasonable accuracy with your right hand, you probably fall into this category. In a cinema, I will always gravitate to the right-hand side, so that my left eye ranges over more of the screen than my right.

My father and my sister are both lefties, but I and my mother are right-handed.

What's odd is that my father, who will be 89 in June, was (AFAIK) never forced to use his right hand for anything. But he played some sports right-handed, and was quite good at them. He bowled and played golf right-handed, but played tennis left-handed.

And now he plays pickleball (go, DAD!).

r76 where did you live as a child? I'm almost 75 and never used an inkwell.

Back in my youth, I typed the telegraph left-handed, with my quill pen.

Let's be a left-handed, neurodivergent, queer, Latinx activist throwing the first brick at Stonewall.

[quote) I'm almost 75 and never used an inkwell.

I'm almost 71 and I never used an ink well other than to fill my fountain pens which I used all through high school. I didn't start using a ballpoint until college. I still use a fountain pen at home when writing checks, etc. I still buy my ink in the jar and use fountain pens with ink draw cartridges. I write so much nicer with a fountain pen.

Ah -- but R81, are you left handed?

People on the spectrum (ie, Bill Gates) are far more likely to be left handed:

About 28% of people with autism are left-handed, compared to 10% of the general population. People with autism are also 2.34 times more likely to be mixed-handed than the general population

Leftys are the only ones thinking in their right mind.

I wrote with my right hand and do everything else with my left. I forget what it’s called but they say it’s a sign of low intelligence lol

When you’re a Biden, you use both hands.

On my Dad's side of the family, there's something of a preponderance of lefties, excepting my Dad and his seven siblings; after Grandma, it apparently skipped a generation, showing up again among the cousins with more than was statistically usual. I was one of them.

When she was little, Grandma endured a lot of abuse from parents and teachers, trying to force her to be right-handed. This made her an aggressive advocate for lefties among her grandkids. Coming to Texas to celebrate Thanksgiving with us one year (1970, I believe - the same year I had to evade a pair of teenagers/young adults trying to abduct me walking home from school, as I have related to the DL), she misinterpreted my Mom's table settings with silverware to the right of the plate as evidence of an effort to change my handedness. It wasn't, but still a confrontation broke out.

My Mom always sought to accommodate my lefthandedness, sending me to school with a pair of lefty scissors with the green rubber handles. My first grade teacher was having none of it; the scissors kept disappearing from the vinyl zipper bag in my binder. Eventually we realized it was the teacher doing it when I was out with the other kids at recess. There were a lot of issues with her, including her pulling my hair, slapping me around, and knocking me out of the desk. I've no idea what her actual issue with me was (the fact that I was lefthanded? Seems too extreme, but who knows?), but she concentrated her physical and verbal abuse on me, and threatened the other students that if they told anyone, she would do the same to them. Crazy bitch.

That particular school cultivated a weirdly abusive ethos; the principal was rumored to possess an electric paddle to be used on students. Indeed there was, in his office, hanging on the wall behind his desk, a wooden paddle with wires strung to plugs protruding from its edges. Looking back on it, I don't believe it was in any sense functional, but seemed to be just for show, but the fact that teachers and the principle were themselves responsible for propagating the rumor is very odd. My parents removed me from that school, and had to do a certain amount of negotiation with the ISD to permit me to attend a different elementary school.

The next one was just as backward and savage; on the first day, a little girl accused me of having said a bad word, and I was made to stand with my face to the wall in a corner at the front of the class for fifteen minutes, hands behind my back, holding a dime against the wall with my nose. If the dime fell to the floor, the teacher doubled the time. I didn't last a week there.

The third elementary school had to be the last; no more district shifting around. My second grade teachers were also quite abusive; lots of slapping, pinching, and hair-pulling. This bullshit seemed to stop when I reached the third grade, and I never experienced it again; it was as if there'd been a sea change in the way classes were conducted.

Sorry, I've digressed quite far from the subject of handedness, but I'm curious: did anyone else experience that kind of abuse in schools from the early 1970s?

R87 Holy hell. was this in America? It sounds like the British schools in Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I went to public elementary in California during the early 70s, and the principal had a wooden paddle with holes cut into it, but it was used as more of a deterrent than a weapon. Only 2 in my class actually went under the paddle. Corporal punishment in Cali schools was banned in the 80s. Other than that, the principal and teachers were very nice and professional. I didn’t witness any abuse; left-handed students were allowed to be left-handed, and given the proper scissors. I think the overall culture of the school administration determines the type of teachers they hire, and the behavior they conform to. Sorry you ended up with sociopaths, PD.

I went to middle school with a girl who was truly ambidextrous. She could write and draw beautifully with both hands. But oftentimes when she was asked a question about anything, it would take her a minute to process and reply. I wonder if her left/right brains were warring with each other for an appropriate answer.

An ambidextrous chick?

Beating the guys off with both hands.