Handy But Sinister

In case you don't already know, or haven't guessed, I think you should know that I belong to a persecuted and misunderstood minority, one which is disproportionately represented in the creative arts, politics and entertainment, but which has inspired horror, revulsion and even cruelty in sections of the majority "normal" population. Surprisingly, it's something I have in common with six post-WW2 US presidents, and although it is sometimes described as a "preference", that is highly inappropriate and discriminatory: we're talking biology here. Curiously, Churchill and Callaghan have been the sole British Prime Ministers to be inclined this way, at least openly. What this says about our two nations I'm not sure.

I mean, of course, that we are all left-handed. There, I've said it.

Growing up left-handed is a lot easier now than it used to be, but it's still a challenge. Not so long ago, left-handed children were persecuted and forced into adopting right-handedness at school, with predictably negative developmental consequences. It probably took the pig-headed egotism and fuck-you privilege of a Churchill to resist such brutal attempts at conversion therapy. This may have seemed necessary and in a child's own interest to the right-handed majority, but I would say it is at least on a par with the socially-enforced denial of one's sexuality. And yet there seems never to have been a Left-Handed Liberation movement. We're just so damned adaptable, not to say compliant!

As someone who is completely left-sided – even though it has become weaker than the right, I still raise a viewfinder or telescope to my left eye, for example – I was reconciled long ago to my daily encounters with rectitude. Indeed, I have never knowingly bought or used a "left-handed" product, not so much as a pair of scissors or a computer mouse. You just learn to turn yourself inside out and back to front. Writing with an ink pen is a classic problem with a classic cack-handed solution, but just try operating a tin-opener with your left hand, for example, or opening a penknife, or to cut with comfort and precision with scissors. If you're right-handed, it has probably never even crossed your mind that there might be a problem there. Ditto virtually every device in the workshop, kitchen, or factory. Which side is the handle, the switch, or the main control? Where does the flex come out? If nothing else, being left-handed predisposes you to sympathy with other invisible minorities who are daily inconvenienced, or worse, by the unthinking majority.

The condition does not seem to be directly heritable: no-one else in my family is left-handed, and neither are my children. On the other hand it is not freakishly rare: generally estimated at around 10% of the population. Most of us are born lefties – sometimes described as "right brain dominant" – but, although I'm not aware of anyone who has chosen to achieve left-handedness, some unfortunates have had it thrust upon them. Two remarkably similar extreme cases were Paul Wittgenstein, brother of  philosopher Ludwig, a concert pianist, and Josef Sudek, the Czech photographer, both of whom lost their right arms as soldiers in WW1. Wittgenstein continued to play concerts with just the one hand, and commissioned pieces for left hand only from the likes of Britten, Prokofiev, and Ravel. Sudek managed to grapple with view cameras – unwieldy and awkward mechanisms under the best of circumstances – and produced an extraordinary body of work. Although goodness knows how he managed all those fiddly screws, knobs, and "movements", never mind working in the darkroom one-handed.

As a music-mad teen I learned to play guitar on a "normal" instrument borrowed from a friend, and as a result I ended up playing left-handed but upside-down, i.e. with the bass strings at the bottom. This does actually makes some difficult chords easier, but it's not ideal in the longer term. In fact, I gave up guitar altogether a few years ago, having developed arthritis in my right thumb's lowest joint; partly, I suspect, as a result of the contortions required to hold down the treble strings. Jimi Hendrix famously played a right-handed guitar left-handed, of course, but had the sense to restring his instrument, which is almost certainly the only reason I was never as good as him.

I'm not sure how southpaws fare in the armed forces, but I can't imagine mixing "handednesses" sits well with the super-tidy military mind. Hendrix would have known, of course, as he had been in the US Airborne, albeit briefly, as an alternative to imprisonment for getting caught in stolen cars once too often; maybe he fired his weapon upside down, too? The trouble is that you can't restring a standard-issue firearm. A bolt-action rifle like the classic British Lee-Enfield is designed to be operated with the right hand while cradled with the left. Worse, if not fitted with some kind of deflector, an automatic weapon will only eject spent shell-cases away from the right-handed firer's face: I have certainly read of at least one left-handed M16 user getting a hot ejected casing inside his collar and inflicting "friendly fire" on his comrades in the ensuing panic. Doubtless left-handed slingshotters, bowmen, and wielders of edged weapons of all kinds down the ages have created similar havoc from time to time. Perhaps that's why they call us sinister?

Sinister, not to mention gauche, cack-handed, maladroit, and so on. There's an interesting recent discussion of the Italian and Spanish word manco on the Language Hat blog – the word crops up in the spaghetti western For a Few Dollars More – where left-handedness is implicitly regarded as a lack of capacity or a form of disability, etymologically, at least. It seems the cultural prejudice against left-handedness is universal, and universally negative; we won't even get into the Islamic prohibitions enjoined upon use of the left "dirty" hand. This, despite the eminence and disproportionate contribution of the left-handed to culture and science.

So let's start at the top: Beethoven, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Goethe, Newton, Nietzsche, Tom Stoppard, Charlie Chaplin, half of the Coen Brothers ... The list, as they say, is endless, although it's true the ink of the list has been smudged into semi-legibility along the left edge; clearly, it must have been written by some cack-handed scribe.

Of course, should you want to identify as left-handed you'd be very welcome. But you'll never really be a leftie... Here, catch! Thought so...

It seems the smaller culprit has one finger missing all but the top joint