Left-Handed Compliment

I am one-third of the way through my year-long project in handedness. For the last four months, I have consciously used my non-dominant left hand to perform dominant-handed tasks wherever possible. This experience has given me a bit more patience, a new appreciation for how our hands work together, and--unexpectedly--a certain joy in writing things by hand.

The tasks we typically perform with the non-dominant hand are often just as complex as dominant-handed ones. As I struggle to manipulate objects with my left hand, my right hand must learn to position the objects being manipulated. It sounds simple, but this project has proven equally challenging for both hands. Even something as simple as knotting shoelaces takes some concentration as my oh-so-dextrous right hand fumbles with holding the correct loop in the correct location for the left hand to thread.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?!"

Often, when I tell someone I am left-handed for the year, their first question is, "Even when writing?!" I actually found that a relatively easy transition. It still takes me almost twice as long to write with my left hand than with my right. This might be a bigger problem if I handwrote more than a dozen characters in the course of the average day.

Last week, a customer asked me to label a number of items for her, and I did so with my new-found deliberation. She was, as it turned out, in a hurry to get somewhere, but said nothing as I went to work with a Sharpie. When I had finished, she burst out in effusive praise of my penmanship, calling it 'spectacular', among other things.

Having learned to read and write English during a summer-long crash-course as a teenager, I do not have what most people would consider 'spectacular' handwriting. I favor unremarkable block print, ideal for filling out forms that give you too much space for date of birth and too little for address. To this day, I only know enough cursive to sign my own name.

I might have asked her what she found so spectacular about my blocky letters, but she was in a hurry to get somewhere and left me mystified. Was she a pharmacist, inured to abysmal standards of legibility? Perhaps she noticed that I had paid a great deal of attention to writing and thought it deserved reward? Did she just like praising people? Where was she when my high school English teacher called my handwriting a 'disgrace' in front of the class, threatening to fail me unless turned in my next assignment in cursive?

Up until then, I had only ever been complimented on my penmanship while studying Japanese at university. Sensei was delighted with my handwriting, especially when we got to kanji. Kanji are logograms borrowed from Chinese, which is my native language. Penmanship had always been my weakest subject in Taiwan, but it did not take much proficiency to outshine the American students, who had to learn an entirely novel script.

In any case, the lady's praise for my left-handed writing--however unexpected--awakened in me a kind of wonder at the intricacies of vision, thought, and movement involved in writing anything by hand. Meditative writing is, for me, no longer confined to the realm of brush calligraphy (which I practice sometimes, however poorly). Every time I take up a pen now, I remember that the whole phenomenon of writing is...well, pretty spectacular.

Immutable

I have spent the last two months using my non-dominant left hand to perform typically dominant-handed tasks (see Born Sinister for details). It has proven neither as easy as I hoped, nor as difficult as I feared. I am not by any means ambidextrous, and even if long practice makes me proficient in using my left hand, science says I cannot change my chirality.

At least not yet! Perhaps someday a procedure will exist that can make me left-handed, or ambidextrous. Would I seek out such a procedure? It depends on a lot of factors, but though I find the idea of ambidexterity appealing, it is not likely to be a high priority for me. I would probably do it if the expense (to finance and health) were not prohibitive.

If I were left-handed, the inconvenience of operating in a world designed for right-handed people might make the prospect of changing handedness more compelling. If I were a left-handed person living a century ago in a predominantly Christian society, I would probably feel a great deal of pressure to cease relying on the 'devil's hand'.

We might argue until we turned blue which of the above are 'good' reasons for wanting to change handedness, but I suspect we can mostly agree that such a (hypothetical) procedure is not unethical in and of itself. At various points in history, left-handed people have been pressured by society to change; that was wrong, regardless of whether it was possible.  However, there is nothing wrong with a left-hander wanting to be right-handed, or vice versa, or with either wanting to become ambidextrous.

Ah-ha! Now the ring's on the other hand! Or something...

Some of you have already figured out what I am getting at, especially if you know I like to use handedness as an analogy for sexual orientation.

I consider 'reparative therapy' and other pseudo-scientific 'cures' for homosexuality comparable to shaming or forcing a left-handed person to use his right hand. My aunt and countless other left-handed children of her generation have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of such measures. No sound medical procedure exists for changing either chirality or sexual orientation.

However, that does not mean it is not possible. If a safe and effective procedure existed to change sexual orientation, I would not deem a voluntary application of it any more unethical in and of itself than hypothetically changing handedness. Note the key parts of that statement: 'voluntary' and 'in and of itself'. Also note that I am not, in fact, advocating the pursuit of such a procedure. I just want honest discourse about the issue, which has been politicized very nearly beyond the reach of science and reason.

We still live in a society that denigrates sexual minorities, though that attitude has changed much over the last few decades. Because of the LGBT community's harrowing experiences with forced conversion efforts, the immutability of sexual orientation has become a central theme in the modern gay rights movement. The slogan 'born this way' and its corollaries stem from the conceit that sexual minorities' rights should be respected because they 'cannot help it'. Logical problems aside, I feel that this is a flawed argument because we do not actually know that sexual orientation is immutable.

Even if we banned research into changing sexual orientation, our expanding knowledge of human sexuality in general may someday put such procedures within reach of those willing to perform them illegally. If we are lucky, none of that will come to pass (and it may never come to pass, for that matter) until sexual orientation has become as much of a non-issue as handedness is now.

I hope to see a future where sexual orientation, like handedness, is considered a value-neutral variation. If, in that future, methods exist to alter sexual orientation and/or handedness, I can imagine any number of practical reasons why people would seek out such procedures. I do not mean to start saving up for ambidexterity just yet--but maybe someday.

Born Sinister

"I...am not left-handed!"

I have decided on a project for the coming year: using my non-dominant (left) hand for tasks normally performed with the (right) dominant hand. Exclusions include situations where clumsiness can easily end in disaster and the use of items designed specifically for the right hand.

As I begin 'practicing' with my left hand, I have noticed just how much the design of everyday products subtly favor the right-handed. Presumably actual left-handed people, who grow up with these inconveniences, adapt to them in time and seek out non-handed/left-handed alternatives. Freshly and artificially left-handed, though, I find myself struggling with scissors and fumbling with can openers constantly.

This will prove another interesting and challenging year (refer to the previous post for a recounting of my E-Prime project for 2011).

It occurred to me, in thinking about handedness, that it makes a decent analogy for sexual orientation--better, in a lot of ways, than the ethnicity parallel that so many LGBT activists prefer.

Humanity contains about the same percentage of non-right-handed people as LGBT people. Chirality, like sexual orientation, appears congenital, but science has not yet explained what determines either of them. One often cannot tell a person's handedness at first glance, and most right-handed people assume everyone else shares their hand dominance. Also, certain religious groups considered both left-handedness and homosexuality inherently evil.

Oh, did I use the past tense there?

Like every analogy, it breaks down at some point, but I had fun playing with the idea. Today, in the West, most people do not actively discriminate against left-handed people, nor assign any real significance to handedness at all. However, I doubt anyone came to the conclusion that left-handed people deserve the same rights as right-hand people because they cannot help it

Why, then do so many LGBT activists and allies cling to the 'born this way' argument? For those not familiar with the conceit, it pretty much explains itself: we should not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity because LGBT people came that way and cannot help it.

A corollary holds that the existence of homosexuality in the rest of the animal kingdom makes it 'natural', therefore we should not condemn it.

I do not take issue with the premises. Sexual orientation and gender identity do seem largely congenital and stable as far as we can tell, and animals do exhibit a great variety of sexual behaviors, including homosexuality. However, I take issue with the reasoning (or lack thereof), and object to the proliferation of such arguments in the societal dialog about LGBT issues.

We do not grant civil liberties to left-handed people because 'God made them that way', nor because variations in chirality exist in other species. We do it because we recognize that handedness (or sexual orientation, or gender identity, et al.) does not violate the rights of others in a free(ish) society, and thus has no bearing on the worthiness of an individual to receive those same rights.

It does not make any difference whether a person can change his homosexuality or his left-handedness. I say this as someone who has arguably chosen both, and I defy anyone to tell me I ought to do otherwise. 'Born this way' might make a catchy refrain in a pop song, but never mistake it for a sound argument against discrimination.