Around 10% of the human population is left-handed which means that they favour their left hand to eat, write and do most tasks. The world is created for right-handed people: buttons, zips, doorways, scissors, furniture, the keyboard and mouse, musical instruments, doorknobs…Everything is designed for the ‘majority’ right-handers in mind and the world can look very different from the point of view of the left-hander. On Twitter, a handedness analogy was used to start a conversation about trans people.
This is something we still see in India: kids who favour their left hand are ‘taught’ to eat, write and perform other tasks with their right hand. When people stop forcing left-handed people to conform, we see that a significant percentage of the population is actually left-handed – simply because there is no coercion, no shame, no reprimands anymore.
There is a stigma around handedness as well. Not only is it utilitarian to be right handed (because the world was created for right handed people), there are religious and social reasons for this. In India we think of the left hand as being used for ‘dirty work’, in the West it is - or used to be - seen to be the Devil’s hand.
Even smartphones are geared for right handed people. The stigma, the shaming and the feeling as thought the world is stacked against someone – it used to be like that for left handed people, and now it is true for trans kids.
It is the feeling of being in the wrong body; having to behave in a way different from what is expected of a person. We saw the same pattern of increase in the number of left-handed people then, as we see an increase of trans people now
It isn't as though the proportion of the population with autism, dyslexia or ADHD has increased. It is just that people are now 'allowed' to be different; being accepted for what they are and acknowledged as being just as worthy as anyone else.
Because of societal norms and parental expectations, kids seen as ‘different’ in any way are made to suffer the consequence of this whether it is left-handed kids or trans kids.
Being left handed was seen as ‘an affliction’ or a flaw to be corrected or cured. A lot of people still think about trans people the same way. They think that the conviction trans people have that they were born with the wrong body; their need for body modification, therapy and other treatments to transition is some kind of disorder.
Left-handed people underwent a lot because they were seen as ‘abnormal’ in some way; trans people continue to do so today.
We have always had people that are different from what is seen as the norm. However we now (hopefully) know a little better. We don’t try to straightjacket people into narrow silos of what we think they should be simply because everyone else seems that way. Perhaps we are becoming more empathetic as a species? Perhaps we are now more accepting of our differences? Perhaps more people will be able to live their lives freely and more authentically? We can hope.
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