Posted on 12/22/2015 12:55:07 PM PST by huckfillary
Before adjourning for Christmas, Congress voted unanimously to officially recognize August 13th as National Left-Handers Day. The day has been unofficially celebrated by the National Left Hander's Club since 1996. It is also celebrated by several progressive Christian evangelical denominations as the Feast of Leftus.
At a hastily convened news conference, Club spokesperson Ian Radburn hailed the vote as a symbolic but significant first step in raising awareness of Right Privilege, the difficulties and inconveniences of living in a right-handed world, and coming of age in a right-dominant culture and society. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell said, “The stars are now aligned to include crimes against left-handed persons in federal hate-crimes legislation. Left-Handed persons constitute an estimated 7-10 percent of the world’s population. If this doesn’t qualify them for minority/victim status, what does? This is the next logical step in our quest for universal social justice. This Congress will not rest until every aggrieved group and subgroup gets its due.â€
Prominent left-handers were quick to praise the action. Barack Obama, a left-hander, praised the vote as a long time in coming. “As a biracial, androgynous left-hander, I suffered egregious torment growing up in a white, sexually-confident, right-dominant world.†He ordered that only the left-wing of the White House be illuminated for the indefinite future. Former Los Angeles Dodgers great, Sandy Koufax, tearfully recalled the injustices suffered as a left-handed child. He vowed from an early age, he said, to use his left hand as a scourge against right-handed people. He went on to strike out over 2,500 right-handed batters during his ten-year career. He tearfully quoted passages from the biography of his childhood hero, the late pitcher Lefty Groves. In Growing Up Lefty, Groves chronicled the pain and torment of being a left-handed child, writing, “I lost count at an early age of how many times I cried myself to sleep for having been born left-handed.â€
Radburn called the crusade against the injustices suffered by left-handed people as the last frontier in the battle for social justice. “Between seven and ten percent of the world’s population is estimated to be left-handed. Yet, right-handed people get over 90% of the jobs, and over 90% of college admissions. This is the 21st Century, yet our right-dominant capitalist economic system has never produced a left-handed hammer, a left-handed saw, or a left-handed cell-phone. We still eat with right-handed kitchen utensils. We still labor in the kitchen with right-handed stoves, right-handed toasters, and right-handed can openers. Our society has made huge inroads in the struggle against crimes of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Such crimes are now officially recognized as hate crimes. Yet, the injustices suffered by left-handed people go largely unacknowledged and unaddressed. We will not stand down until crimes against the manually-different are included in hate-crimes legislation.
As late as 2001, left-handedness was still designated by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder. Parents of left-handed children often demanded shock therapy as a treatment for their left-handed offspring. In 2002, in response to numerous lawsuits by the Club and affiliated groups, the Association dropped left-handedness from its list of treatable disorders and permanently banned shock treatment for left-handedness. Parents once resorted to numerous backward, cruel, and physically painful methods of home-treatment such as tying their children’s left arms behind their backs or attaching heavy weights to their left arms. Under the proposed hate-crimes legislation, parents and guardians guilty of such practices would face stiff fines and penalties.
Like so many social movements of the last half-century, the Left-Handed Movement has taken root on our college and university campuses. Several now have forbidden the use of the term “lefty†to refer to left-handers. A few have designated it as hate-speech. The Charter of the Left-Handers Club calls the L-word “a divisive and hateful construct of right-handed superiority and privilege.†Several colleges now forbid athletic coaches from using the word “southpaw†in reference to left-handed athletes.
“The speed of justice is slow, yet sure,†said Radburn. “The Club will mobilize and organize and agitate until we have eliminated the last vestiges of manual discrimination.†In closing, Radburn announced that former Beatle Paul McCartney, left-handed since birth, has promised to donate 10% of the proceeds from his ongoing tour to the Left-Handers Club. In his message to the Club, McCartney wrote, “You have no idea how difficult it was being a left-handed guitarist. I was constantly ridiculed, even after Sgt. Pepper, and it is all but impossible to buy left-handed guitars. I have to have them specially made.â€
Good one.
Funny.
Good satire has a ring of truth to it.
I know this is satire but I have always thought left handed people were a bit different.
The word “sinister” comes from the Latin word “sinistra” which means left handed.
Ambies rule!
I do own port-sider scissors, but that’s it as far as tools and toys.
Finally, I’m a victim!!!!
Where’s my reparations??
Sinistra merely means “left,” not “left-handed.”
Left handedness is so valuable that the Pittsburgh Pirates traded an all-star quality second baseman to the New York Mets for a mediocre left-handed pitcher.
There actually is a right-hand bias, especially in technology.
Keyboards with numberpads to the right. Microwave controls on the right side. Fridges ship with doors configured to open for right-handers.
But American cars and most planes favor lefties. You wind up operating the primary controls in both with your left hand, gadgets and gizmos with your right.
One of the first places to start in the movement for justice for left-handers is to demand reparations or least a public apology from all of the right-handed penmanship teachers.
They were unwilling or unable to help all of us left-handers with cursive writing. Justice for LEFTIES!!
(thank God for typewriters and word processors).
I am left handed, and I don’t give a crap about “left-hander rights”.
I’ve just dealt with it my whole life.
WHO CARES.
ambi means both
and dexterous means right hand + skillful.
so ambidextrous means both right handed :o)
Check your “Right-Handed Privilege”.
In crew aircraft, the PIC sits in the left seat with the co-pilot working the dials and switches.
In fighters, the stick is controlled by the right hand and throttles the left. . .both the stick and throttles have buttons and switches. . .”HOTAS”
I guess you missed the part where this is satire. . . .
Hey, I’m left handed. Gimme.
I agree.
The insults I’ve received from other people (”Boy, when you write, it looks so AWKWARD!) has turned me into the ultimate victim. Forget Black Lives Matter! Southpaws Matter!
Who will join me in this fight?
I demand an end to handist microagressions that are inherent in the system!
Reparations now!
Make the wrong-handed feel the suffering that they have inflicted on the left-handed for too long!
Hands off my handedness! Hand off or no peace!
Justice after all these years of struggling with can openers and scissors. I didn’t even know I was an oppressed minority.
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