Left Handed & Ambidextrous – Pressure from society to be Right Handed

“Society plays such a weird role in making you who you are that sometimes they tend to forget that there is only so much that you can be moulded into.”

Copyright © Qudsia Pervez

Thou shalt not use thy left hand for writing!

I was born a leftie/left-handed person, which means that my left hand is more stable than my right one. I remember as a child I was infatuated with pens and writing, I held my first pencil/crayon/pen in my left handed and every time my mother would correct me and place it in my right hand.

Of course whenever she would not be looking I would use my left hand because I felt that it was where my strength came from.

When I joined school, my teachers would do the same and it would leave me severely annoyed. One day I outright told my teacher that I write with my left hand not my right, so she said, “Devils write with their left hand. Are you a devil?”

I was young and impressionable, after every teacher I knew told me that I would go to hell for being a leftie, I decided to attempt writing with my right hand. It was very difficult, I could not get the alphabets right at all, the loops the curves, it was painful and I hated that I could not use my left hand to write.

Becoming Ambidextrous

After several years of terrible hand writing and exchanging hands every now and then I realised that I could use both hands in almost similar capacity. Turned out that now I was ambidextrous.

Devil is thy name

Of course let us focus on other things than writing, like cutting things with scissors or knifes, also my biggest bone of contention, having to avoid holding the spoon in my left hand, since it was the devil’s doing. Now in my part of the society eating with the right hand is almost a religious obligation so imagine my predicament. If I were to hold a spoon in the left hand I would immediately be told to correct my ways.

Why society has an obsessive need to ‘fix’ other people?

Even though most left handed people will agree with me about how there is absolutely nothing wrong with being left handed yet a dominant part of the society feels like it is a wrong practice. So every so often I would find myself in a battle of ‘we’ against ‘them’.

How all of this useless drama affected me?

Honestly, my writing has been severely compromised due to this entire left versus right battle that I have apparently played my entire life. I had been led to believe that my left hand is almost impure so except the basic necessities, it must never be used for any other important doing. When I was in the eighth grade I started writing with my left hand again and it felt wonderful, I felt happy to write but funnily enough again, my so called role models enforced the ‘must use right hand only’ ritual upon me.

As a result of this drama now I switch hands between writing or any deed and mostly forget myself, whether I am using my right or left hand. I guess I use them instinctively or as per convenience.

I still have to justify being ‘Left-Handed’

Of course now I write with my left hand and do as I please but still to this day I have to give an explanation of why I use my left hand.

Conclusion?

From my personal experience what I have realised is the fact that the society itself is quite hypocritical in nature. While all your life you are encouraged to be an individual or ‘unique’, if God forbid you actually are unique or different in any way, you are treated as a general outcast.

My advice? Do whatever you want, hell with the society!!