Larry.
This may be chiming in a bit late - while investigating why my
mailbox is full I found this discussion list & your item caught my eye.
Someone else may have already brought this up & I'm running the risk
of offending someone I've never met - but although my personal experience
with lefties is that they tend as a group to be high achievers, I had to do
some research on left handedness while at Vic a couple of years ago & the
prevalent medical explanation for left handedness seemed to be that it
results from a minor deficit in brain development during the early stages of
fetal growth.
Don't swear at me Larry.
I agree it is a sorry reflection on the human condition that
something as insignificant as a preference for using the left hand can lead
to the level of discrimination and persecution that it has historically & I
hope you escaped its effects.
Peter M.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Burke, Laurence M. II [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Saturday, 19 August 2000 03:19
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: On Lefties
>
> <<One colleague told me that many young artists have reading disorders and
> so should not be expected to do academic work. This disorder, she said,
> is indicated by the fact that they are left-handed.>>
>
> I suppose I've lived a sheltered life, and had the advantage of living in
> this modern age where such things are seen for the meaningless misguided
> fears that they are. Still, as a lefty, I hope that this person got a
> very
> strange look at the very least, and preferably a lecture about what a load
> of [insert expletive of choice] that idea is. I inherited a love of
> reading
> (as well as my left-handedness) from my father, and my late wife was also
> a
> lefty and an early and avid reader. As to academic work, my father is a
> mechanical engineer with an MBA, I've got my MA, and the only reason my
> wife
> didn't have an advanced degree is because she didn't have the opportunity
> to
> get one. (I'm sure that she would have gotten one eventually had she
> lived.)
>
> I knew a woman on the staff of my high school who was lefty, and started
> her
> own business selling left-handed products and items with left-handed
> slogans. I always got the impression that she had (at some point) had to
> "defend" her left-handedness, perhaps against such ideas as quoted above.
> But she was sufficiently older than me that I always considered that kind
> of
> thing to belong to the distant past, along with my left-handed
> grandmother's
> experience with the nuns' rulers in Catholic school.
>
> In the grand scheme of things, such handedism (?) is certainly less
> widespread than racism, sexism, extreme nationalism, and probably a few
> other -isms as well. But shouldn't that make it easier to stamp out? And
> does that make it any less dangerous?
>
> Thank you for your time. We now return you to your regularly scheduled
> list.
>
> -Larry Burke
>
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