The Long History of Left-Handed Persecution

There's a reason they call it the sinister hand

May 29, 2020 · 5 min read

Strange as it seems, left-handers are arguably one of the oldest and most consistently attacked minority groups. But why is something as benign as what hand you favor so darn controversial? It seems it’s just part of our history.

Ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were all biased against left-handers. We can probably put the blame for that on the gods. They typically reserved the right hand for blessings and showing favor, while they set aside the left for cursing and inflicting punishment.

Islam forbade the use of the left hand for human interaction, and even Christianity favored the right hand. “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,” says Matthew 25:41.

Quotes like this drive home the facts: The left side belongs to the devil. He baptizes his followers with the left hand, greets witches with the left hand, and watches you over his left shoulder. If you want to get a look at one of his devilish companions, you’ll see it when you look to your left. Everything good is reserved for the right. Doesn’t Jesus sit at the right hand of the Father after all?

Yet we can’t blame religion for all our left-handed woes. The word left seems to have been infused with negative connotations from the start. Take sinister, for example. Its roots come from the Latin word for left, sinistra.

Then there’s the Anglo-Saxons lyft meaning weak or broken. But it doesn’t stop there. There's the Goth hlidumei, weakest or most crooked; Italian manco, crippled or deficient; French manchot, having one hand or arm.

The only group to see the left in a positive light seems to have been the Celts. They associated it with femininity and fertility. Although that could be a doubtful consolation for left-handed men.

Haters gonna Hate

Surely this was primitive thinking. As the world matured people must have put aside such simplistic prejudices, right? I mean really people, it’s just a preference.

“LEFT-HAND’ED, adjective

1. Having the left hand or arm more strong and dextrous than the right; using the left hand and arm with more dexterity than the right.
2. Unlucky; inauspicious; unseasonable”

-Websters 1828 dictionary

Ok, maybe not.

If you thought advances in science and psychology would have diminished all those irrational stereotypes, you’re wrong.

Being Left-handed Makes You Criminal

Left-handers had it hard in the 18th and 19th centuries, despite any enlightenment they were said to experience.

Places like Europe and North America were ruthless in their attempt to rid society of the bane of left-handers. Educators zealously attempted to train children to use the right hand only. Errant left hands were tied down and corporal punishment used on any nonconformists. But why be so hard on children just for using their left hand? Because it’s a defect, that's why, and not just physical.

Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) is considered by many the father of criminology. He held to the theory that left-handers were not just losers, they were “primitive and abnormal” and thus more disposed to crime.

Although Lombroso’s theories were later cast into the realm of quack science, they managed to fuel the fires of racist and classist thinking in their day. I bet he influenced Wilhelm Stekel, who in 1911 wrote:

“The right-hand path always signifies the way to righteousness, the left-hand path the path to crime. Thus the left may signify homosexuality, incest, and perversion . . .

The Lefty Struggle Continues

Unfortunately, discriminatory attitudes waltzed right into the modern era.

There was American psychoanalyst Abram Blau calling left-handers stubborn, rebellious, rigid people. British educational psychologist Cyril Burt agreed. He labeled lefties stubborn, willful, clumsy, and awkward. (Burt, by the way, was accused of falsifying research data after his death in 1971.)

Some of that awkwardness Burt noted certainly came because lefties were forced by teachers to use their right hand. In the 1970s some educators were beginning to realize that forcing kids to become right-handed was leading to stammering, dyslexia, and emotional distress. English King George VI is probably the most famous example of stuttering instigated by forced switching. Despite the evidence, many still chose to ignore the facts.

The noted psychologist Theodore Blau (1928–2003) said left-handed children — or sinister children as he called them — were academically and behaviorally challenged. He also concluded they were more prone to mental diseases such as schizophrenia. Even in the 80s, one Stanley Coren hypothesized left-handers lived shorter, poorer lives. Left-handedness in his view was the result of “neurological insult or physical malfunctioning.”

These biases persisted around the globe. Soviet bloc countries had anti-left policies through the 1970s. Spain, Italy, and Yugoslavia all forbade the use of left-handed writing in schools, and in Albania, it was even declared a crime.

A Glimmer of Hope

Thankfully, not everyone was biased against left-handers. The educational reformer John Dewey argued for tolerance towards individual differences like hand preferences in the first half of the 20th century.

Psychologist Marian Annett spent 50 years researching handedness. Her conclusion? The findings of Coren and his lot were fundamentally flawed. Mental health data from a 2010 analysis concurs. Being left-handed doesn’t increase the risk of schizophrenia or predict any other cognitive or neural issues. Lefties also aren’t in danger of dying younger than their right-handed counterparts. So you can stop planning that early retirement.

Statistics and studies are great, but there’s real-life proof that left-handed people can be well balanced and successful. Eight U.S. presidents have been left-handed.

Artists Leonardo de Vinci, Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Peter Paul Rubens, and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec were all lefties. Superstars Lady Gaga, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Eminem, Paul McCartney, and Spike Lee are all southpaws. Neil Armstrong, Marie and Pierre Curie, Babe Ruth, Jimi Hendrix, Napoleon Bonaparte — we could go on for a while here. Considering lefties make up only around 10 percent of the population, I don’t think we’re doing too badly.

Old Habits Die Hard

Unfortunately, there are places in the world that still feel left-handedness is an abnormality that need correcting. In China, for example, although it’s estimated 140 million citizens are naturally left-handed, the number of actual left-handers is much smaller.

Parts of Africa and India have their share of haters as well. Use your left hand in Indonesia and you’ll be told it’s impolite and dirty.

We lefties may still have a way to go, but we are making progress. We even have a day dedicated to us. August 13 is International Left-Handers Day, so show some appreciation to the lefties in your life.