I was thinking the other day how different it would be for my sister Dale, if she were to be the brunt of bigotry for being left-handed instead of a lesbian. (She's both. Don't worry, though; it's no secret that she's left-handed. Or gay.)
The parallels are almost inescapable, after all: about the same proportion of the population is left-handed as are gay. When most of us meet somebody, we assume that they're right-handed, which is sometimes slightly awkward for lefties. There's nothing voluntary about being left-handed, and it's something that apparently is permanently decided before you're two ('way before you're two . . . ) -- and it's easy to damage a lefty by demanding that they use their right hands, if you insist hard enough . . .
And you can make a superficial argument about how evil left-handedness is; my dictionary tells me that the word "sinister" appeared around the beginning of the fifteenth century to mean "on the left hand".
The prejudice doesn't stand up to honest scrutiny -- see what I mean about the similarities?
I'm not sure how different a world it would be, though. Right-thinkers would always be on the look for left-handed influences out in the world, ("Hey, Marge, did Roseanne just shake hands with her left hand?"), and we could have endless discussions about whether or not hiring a left-handed teacher would turn all our kids into lefties, as though handedness were something children decided in class. Insecure men would walk down the street with their briefcases in their right hands only, lest anybody think they might be a touch, well, sinister. The ambidextrous would pass as right most of the time; it's just easier.
Imagine the persecution lefties could suffer. People could threaten to institutionalize confused lefty adolescents for writing in that "perverted scriptstyle". Parents would deny the early signs that their kids were sinister, and might well disown those who persisted in their left-handedness. Fundamentalist groups masquerading as research organizations would go on Nightline to explain how some lefties had been found to be child molesters or suicides, and suggest that it was all because of that "left-handed lifestyle"; red-faced women could stand up in the Donahue audience and shriek at uncloseted left-handed parents that they were condemning their children to a life of evil left-handedness, and never mind that lefties have right-handed children as often as righties do. We could have special schools for lefty teenagers who were tired of being beaten up, and right-handed bigots could complain about how that constituted special treatment.
Instead of gay and lesbian bars, we'd probably develop a network of left-handed coffeehouses, where lefties could eat normally -- for them -- without being the victim of stares -- or worse -- or maybe take out a notebook and doodle in peace without having to look over their shoulder. They'd have to be careful, though; likely gangs of leftbashers would occasionally hang out outside the coffeehouses to kick some sinister butt.
We could go into the darker side of it, if you'd like, about Jewish parents saying the prayer for the dead over their sinister progeny . . . but I'd rather think about the Ursula K. LeGuin book that would have been The Lesbian of Darkness instead of The Left Hand of Darkness.
It wouldn't be all persecution, though.
The friends and relatives of lefties would have to, upon rare but definite occasion, go out of their way to say that being a lefty was okay with them (not too often; it gets old), and more often, be careful not to use terms in the same way that a leftbashing bigot might. Not because there was anything wrong with being a lefty, mind, or because anybody really thought that the friends and relatives thought there was, mind, but because in a leftbashing environment, decent people would want to distinguish themselves from the leftbashers.
Hell, there might even be a group called Parents and Friends of Left-handed Individuals. PFLI? (Scans better than the actual PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.)
I bet that friends and relatives would go out of their way in their lefty friends' and relatives' presence to say a good word about known left-handed politicians, and that left-handed scissors would be a common birthday present.
But it all might be a bit awkward, every now and then.
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In the world we live in, though, being left-handed isn't really made much a problem. Being gay is. And it's important for straights to let our gay friends and relatives know that we understand that being gay is normal and appropriate for lesbians and gay men; that we understand that their spouses are their spouses and that their kids are their kids, and that society and law are just going to have to catch up with it.