My wife is Gen-X from eastern Europe (cold war era for those not getting the timeline). She was born left handed but that was considered to be such a bad thing that they forced her to use her right hand for everything. So now she has this mishmash where she does things she grew up with like using a fork, writing, etc. with her left hand, new things (teen+ years) like basketball with the left, and others like Tennis with both.
It isn’t that left handed people didn’t exist, its that they were “corrected”.
Fuck_u_spez_@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Someone can refresh my memory, but didn’t they used to force left handed children to write with their right hands because something something satanic forces?
popekingjoe@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Basically yes.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Yes, and the graph reflects that. The visible prevalence of left handedness increased when we stopped trying to beat the demons out of left handed children. Teachers would beat kids’ knuckles with a yardstick if they caught them writing with their left hands.
It’s not that there were suddenly more left handed people; Those people had always existed, but got beat until they used their right hand instead. When we stopped beating them, they became more visible.