{In keeping with our tradition of welcoming a variety of perspectives on everyday life, we at The Ironist are open to submissions of matters relating to public interest raised by aggrieved contrarians. We recently received the following from an anonymous contributor. Readers may wish to respond. Ed.}
The 1982 film by the film-maker Costa-Gavras entitled Missing is based on a true story that took place during the coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973. One of the American victims of the revolution that ousted Allende is shocked by the mindless and indiscriminate violence suffered by blameless innocents caught up in the conflict. In the film, he warns his friends, “You could be shot here just for being left-handed!” Indeed you could. Perhaps he was.
Mistreatment of the left-handed has gone on for centuries. North American children used to be ridiculed by their teachers and classmates for writing with their left hands, and worse, were often forced to write with their right hands against their shared natural proclivity, an innate inclination from birth that was tampered with in an abhorrently cruel attempt at social engineering on a par with the experiment in “eugenics” advocated in all seriousness by “progressives” like Tommy Douglas and the so-called “Famous Five” feminists celebrated on Parliament Hill, who recommended the forced sterilization of those considered ‘unfit’ to be parents on account of their ‘mentally defective’ status, and all six of whom are complicit in the mutilation of some 3,000 such people in Alberta between 1928 and 1972. Minorities are always victims of thoughtless crusading ideologues, and this is certainly true for those of us who were persecuted by the majority culture merely because we wrote, and defiantly continue to write, with our left hands. As we constitute a mere 10% of the population, we are thereby subject to discrimination, bullying, mockery, occasional overt brutality, and have been patronized by “professionals” for our “disability.” The trauma inflicted by the “RIGHTeous” majority has left lasting scars on their victims. I would know. I am one of them.
I hear even today the laughter of classmates as I wrestled to “write with my right.” All of the student desks in the school, and in most schools then and today, all have the armrest on the RIGHT side. There are no left-handed scissors or left-handed can openers. No accommodation was ever made for ten per cent of the school population. The message was clear: shape up, or ship out. No weirdos or social rejects here! In shame, I peed in my bed at night. I was made to feel ashamed of my “handicap.” One teacher encouraged the class to make fun of me. A supply teacher hit me with a rolled-up newspaper for my “disobedience.” The Principal refused to act against these terror tactics, and my parents had to transfer me to another school where, in a class of 33 yahoos, I could write with my left hand in a far corner of the classroom where the teacher could not see what I was doing, and was too large to fit down the narrow aisle to examine my writing. As a teenager, I worked in a bookshop during the summers. One day a customer noticed I wrote with my left hand at the order desk. “So you’re a leftie!” he growled. “You’re one with Fidel Castro and Stalin! I hate the LEFT! Cancel my order!” Other customers heard. The manager noticed. He shrugged and said nothing.
I was in therapy for years. Now I champion the cause of the maligned minority of “southpaws,” the least of the negative epithets hurled our way. These include ‘cack-handed,’ ‘clicky,’ ‘buck-fisted,’ ‘cow-pawed,’ and a host of others. In Latin and French, both school subjects then, left-handedness has negative connotations. The French word for left is gauche, a word suggestive in English of clumsiness or awkwardness. In Latin, it is worse: sinister, a word redolent of violent threat and ‘underhanded’ conspiracy. Was Brutus, who killed Caesar, left-handed?
The other day I saw a car with a large sticker in the rear window. It read “Proud to be the parents of an autistic child.” My family, should I ever have left-handed children, will have one reading “Dare To Be Proud To Be Left-Handed!” Today I am a calligrapher. My clients praise my handwriting. My work is in such demand that I cannot keep up with the orders that flood in. This is my revenge against the ignorance of the uneducated masses I had to deal with. Most of my clients, of course, are right-handed, though I never ask.
Among the galaxy of the great are many ‘southpaws’: Barack Obama, Judy Garland, Paul McCartney, Leonardo da Vinci, Babe Ruth, Michelangelo, Steve Jobs, Marie Curie, W.A. Mozart, and my own brother, among many, many others.
But how many millions of other left-handed souls lie in untouched and unexcavated graveyards, unknown to everyone except God, now dead and buried, left-handed all, lying in obscurity, whose only crime was secretly possessing left-handed dominance, a characteristic they were forced to keep secret, in shame and fear, of the tyranny of the “RIGHTeous.” It is evidence of cultural genocide. We know who they are, and where they lie. There should be a Royal Commission, at least a rapporteur, to investigate the centuries-long official cover-up, and to report on this shameful mistreatment that made life for the left-handed miserable, and shortened many lives. But authority will do nothing unless forced to apologize, to seek reconciliation, to make up for the sins of the past. No official apology for the brutal suppression of left-handed lives has ever been forthcoming from any government. No monument to these blighted lives has ever been erected, let alone suggested! Although “eugenics” has now mercifully been extirpated from the land, its proponents are still celebrated despite their manifest wickedness.
Our movement to claim our leftful place in public consciousness is growing day by day. We expect soon to have Parades of the Wronged down city streets in every Canadian city, and wave our colourful flag in every place of business across the land. Left-Handed Month will soon be upon us! School boards, universities, the legal profession, and above all, politicians of all stripes will hear our clarion call to the barricades. Curricula will soon be re-written to reflect the unjustly ignored contributions to our society by those of us who are left-handed. Some of us are now advocating throwing out right-handed desks and tearing down such HEAVY-HANDED symbols of oppression as the numerous statues of the right-handed “RIGHTeous”, as other protesters have done this with impunity, so guilt-ridden has majority culture now become!
Our cause is just. The tide of left-handed humanity is approaching your shores! Join us and celebrate LEFT-HANDEDNESS! ABAJO CADENAS! VENCEREMOS! WE SHALL OVERCOME!
