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Title: People/Lefthanders - Living in the Mirror: A Left-Handed Home Page Comments and essays about living as a left-hander, plus links to other left-handedness-related sites, including a large selection of scientific material.

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    Neuroscience_for_Kids_-_Sidedness Educational website about laterality. Includes tests for handedness, footedness, eyedness, and earedness.
    Primate_Handedness_and_Brain_Lateralization_Research At Indiana University (M.K. Holder, Ph.D.). You can participate in the study by filling out an online questionnaire. Site also has links to information (both serious and fun) of interest to left-hand
    Right_Hand,_Left_Hand Website for Chris McManus' book on handedness. Includes articles and online psychological quizzes.
    Scientific_American__Ask_the_Experts__Biology M.K. Holder answers the questions: "Do scientists understand why there are so many more right-handers than left-handers? Do other primates show a similar tendency to favor one hand over the other?"
    Sinistrality Facts and myths about lefthandedness, links to lefthander organizations and stores for left-handed products, information on handgun products designed for left-handed use.
    Trends_in_Japan__Rise_Up,_Ye_Southpaws Article discusses the increased acceptance of lefthandedness in Japan.
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Being Left-Handed: A Left-Handed Home Page

Left-Hander

News FlashSunday, August 13 was International Left Handers DayWelcome to "Being Left-Handed." Whether you're left-handed,right-handed, no-handed, or ambidextrous, I hope you'll find somethingof interest to you here.

Table of Contents

My own experience as a lefty Open forum: Your comments Local Articles Usenet Resources WWW Resources: Scientific Articles and Sites Personal Essays and Opinion Pieces Newspaper Articles Lists of Left-Handed Celebrities Left-Handed Fiction and Poetry Left-Handed Humor Handedness Surveys Personal Left-Handed Home Pages Left-Handed Societies Businesses for Left-Handed People Back-Links

My own experience

Being left-handed... gives me a razor-thin view of what it'slike to be a minority. As a left-hander, I'm discriminated against all the time. Notfor serious things: I am not deniedhousing, medical care, a job, a seat on the bus.But I experience anti-lefty bias in the form ofschool desks that are unusable, carrotpeelers that are useless, power tools (such as skill saws) that aredangerous or even life-threatening, pens that smear and make my writingillegible, computer mice that cause hand cramps. Teachers in Englandtried to force me to write with my right hand when I was a child; Iused to stutter, and perhaps that was why.Language certainly discriminates against the left-hander: A "left-handedcompliment" is not something you want to hear; the word for "left"in French is gauche,and in Latin it'ssinister;in contrast, from the French word for "right,"droit, we get the English wordadroit,and Latin for right is dexter(from which we get such words asdexterous).Ambidextrous means literally "both right."Am I "in my right mind"? Current research can't prove whether or notlefties really do tend towards right-brain dominance.Would right-sphere specialization explain why I think of myself as creative?I would swear being left-handed helps my Tetris scores (thanks toall that visualization of abstract geometric shapes, whichwe lefties are famous for).Who would I be if I was right-handed? Not the same person.Left-handedness is part of my identity, my self. I would sooner cut offmy right arm than be converted to right-handedness; as strong astatement as that is, left-handedness is so integral a part of me that Icould not imagine living otherwise.And is it only simplecoincidence that I am politically left-winged as well as so stronglyleft-handed? (Probably.)A final observationPeople are also left-footed and right-footed.Usually one eye is stronger than the other, so people can beleft-eyed and right-eyed. And even stranger: pay close attention toyour friends' faces. Really stare at them, watch closely when their lipscurve into smiles. You'll see that people are almost alwaysstrongly left-faced or right-faced. One side is usually much moreexpressive than the other. In fact, if you mirror the two sidesof a person's face to create a left-composite and a right-composite,you'll find yourself looking at two completely different people.

Open forum

Now that you've read my opinions, it's your turn...I've received severalcomments from readersabout their own experiences. I invite you tosubmit your own commentsas well.(I am very behind on updating your submissions: but restassured that I do read everything and will post your publiccomments when I have time. I've now received hundreds of submissionsthat I haven't added yet; sorry -- I'm very busy at the moment,but promise that I'll post them when I can.)

Want to read more about left-handedness?

I find that almost everyone who is interested in left-handednessis left-handed. Right-handed people take their dominance forgranted; it's us lefties who are the ones usually looking for moreinformation.Here are some links that are of interest to left-handed people(or sympathetic right-handers). As you can see, there's noshortage of left-handed home pages and Internet sites. Viewpointsexpressed on these sites (especially the humor ones)do not reflect my own opinions.Local ArticlesComments: Read the fascinatingstories that readers from around the world have submitted:Nic M.'s comments (about beingleft-handed in Singapore)Lisa Cockburn's commentsHeather G.'s commentsSandra A. Montgomery's commentsTracy Queen's commentsMimi's commentsLeslie Walker's commentsCarla MacInnisis looking for information linking handedness and mentalillness. Her two letters are well worth reading.Lefthanders' Creativity is an article postedto alt.lefthanders by Ed Hopkins, included here by his request.UsenetThe alt.lefthanders andalt.left-handed newsgroups arein use; the first usually has a reasonable amount of traffic while thesecond is all but abandoned. Both are vulnerable to too muchoff-topic crossposting and spam, like all newsgroups.There's also a Frequently Asked Questions document for the alt.lefthanders newsgroup -- thelefty-faqby Barry D. Benowitz.WWW Resources and Left-Handed Home PagesScientific Articles and SitesThe question I am asked most frequentlyis whether or not handednessis genetic. Dr. Amar J.S. Klar, Ph.D., argues that a single genedetermines handedness (although it's complicated, because thereare random factors).If you don't mind some technical language, read Dr. Klar'shomepage,which briefly discusses his team's discovery and includessome bibliographic information.(Dr. Klar's office is alsorecruitingtest familiesto participate in a study.)Lorin's Left-handedness Sitehas a huge amount of useful information,backed by actual research; it's by Lorin Elias, a graduate studentin Psychology at the University of Waterloo in Canada.Check to see if your question is answeredthere first. It's a great site.The original research on the origins of handedness isa particular highlight.Two interesting arguments: That left-handedness is not associated thatclosely with left-sidedness (and apparently only 57% of left-handersare also left-eyed); and stuttering and hand-switching may not berelated at all (although the research can't disprove it, and Lorin seemsto be of two minds about this one).A treasure trove of scientific articles can be found in theMedlinedatabase's handedness section.Of particular interest are the Halpern and Coren articles, which assert that left-handers may have increased mortality (a theory that is hotlycontested).Note that this a summary and bibliography only; to read the actualarticles, get thee to a library.Primate Handedness and Brain Lateralizationis a very readable scientific site by M.K. Holder, coveringsome myths and research about Brain Lateralization in Primates(including humans).Creationof the Sinister: Biological Contributions to Left-Handednessis an article on the causes of left-handedness and the links betweenleft-handedness and various problems. This article,by Monica Watkins, is part of the Harvard UndergraduateSociety for Neuroscience's BRAIN project.New Findings on the Frequency of Left- and Right-Handedness in Mediaeval Britainis a fairly self-explanatory title for this scientific article. Thispaper is by James Steele (Dept of Archaeology, University ofSouthampton) and Simon Mays (Ancient Monuments Lab, English Heritage).Differences in Brain Laterality Between Males and Females Produce Different Patterns of Perceptual Interference by Kyle R. Cave andHeather Davidson is a brief article, two experiments and anexplanation about perception differences in men and womencaused by differences in the biology of our brain hemispheres. Lateralityis a psychology journal dedicated to lefthandedness (I hope theyput up a Web site eventually). Volume I, Issue 1 appeared in March1996, but I don't know anything more about it.DNA is right-handed. However, it's easy for an artist in a hurry to accidentally draw DNA backwards, or for an editor ondeadline to mirror an image. An embarrassing mistake, to be sure. In theLeft Handed DNA Hall of Fame,Tom Schneiderhas collected a humorous list of well-known scientific journals andpublications that have gotten DNA backwards.(There's also some interesting Molecular Informationavailable at this site.)Handedness and Cerebral Dominanceis a short "Neuro Pearl" by S. Clifford Schold, Jr, MD, CullumProfessor and Chairman, Department of Neurology, UT Southwesternon the topic of Handedness and Cerebral Dominance.From Cornell, an essayOn Teaching Left-Handed Children to Writeby Dexter Kozen is worth reading. (Warning: Plain text for this article is not available; so you might havesome difficulty reading this.) Ironic that his name is "Dexter"...There's a very short article onDexterous early hominidsavailable from the Mesa Community College site (but it doesn't saywho wrote the article). It documents a claim that I've never seenproven, that humans are the only animal with strong handedness.Personal Essays and Opinion PiecesI recommendLucas Pereira's excellent personal reflections and observations onLefthandedness.Todd Kerpelman writes about being left-handed in theHandssection of his body tour, part ofDolphin'sUndersea Playground.The Lesbian of Darknessis author Joel Rosenberg'sthoughtful essay exploring homophobia, by theorizing a world in whichleft-handedness had the same stigma as being a lesbian.Along the same lines,My Brotheris Left Handedmakes the same point in a different way.Oops, it's missing (8/98).Being Left Handedis by Phil Shapiro.His essay (with the same title as my page,coincidentally) is part of his children's stories collection.Left-Handers in Societyis a very long set of pages on M.K. Holder's site(see above).You'll find a lot of fascinating comments from left-handed people on thesubjects of how parents and teachers can work with left-handed childrenas well as how employers can work with left-handed employees.Josepresents some of the problems left-handers have inJoses Best Hand.This off-hand excerpt from the Nausicaa mailing list (a mailinglist discussing Japanese Anime) has some interesting tidbitsabout attitudes in Japanregarding left- and right-handedness:left hand, right hand (Igor V Boronenkov)Re: left hand, right hand (Hikaru)Re: left hand, right hand (Dwayne Fujima)Re[2]: left hand, right hand (Ryoko Toyama).The essayA Plea for the Horizontally Organized (byJohn Perry)is only obliquely related to left-handedness, but still interesting,since it shows a different worldview that mirrors the alternatethinking that often characterizes a left-handed approach. Media Broadcasts and Newspaper ArticlesDetails on a recent (8-Aug-97) NPRTalkof the Nation Science Friday broadcast on left-handednessare available.If you can playRealAudio,you can hear the show, which includes an interview with Dr. Klaron his research and a general discussion ofhandedness. Go to theTalkof the Nation RealAudio Archive.The discussion is about half an hour.(My thanks to Spence, who posted about thisin alt.lefthanders.Spence wrote:"On this page, select the Talk of the Nation: Science Friday (entireprogram) link at the top of the page. To locate the lefty segment ofthe show, click and drag the RealAudio slider to the right until thecounter in the lower right corner of the player indicates 1:15:00.")Gerald McMullon collects some very interesting left-handedarticles from old newspapers at hisArticles on Left-handednesscollection.CHANCE News excerpts from a brief Star Tribune article by staff writerLewis Cope entitled"Where Have All the Lefties Gone?"(detailing investigation intothe comparative life spans of left-handers and right-handers).H.A. Loudermilk, opinion editor of the Daily Aztec, presentsa strong editorial opinion on the superiority of left-handers inLeft-handers do it right.Lists of Left-Handed CelebritiesTheWWW List ofLeft-Handed Celebrities,byMauri Haikola,is the most comprehensive listing ofleft-handed people I've come across.Famous Left-Handersis part of M.K. Holder's site (see above).Left-Handed Fiction and PoetryLeft HandbySteve Andrews)is a short poem about being left handed.TheWork of the Left Handby Elizabeth Herronis a longer poem about war and violence.My Left Handis a very short poem by the famous Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanik(1914-1950). This poem is translated from Turkish by Murat Nemet-Nejat.TheLeft-hand Turn Gameby Bill New is a hypertextual fiction work.Left-Handed HumorAs seen in the Religious Humor mailing list, here's a parody essay calledDextera Domini: The Declaration on the Pastoral Care of Left-Handed Persons(written anonymously and formatted by Elizabeth Knuth).This essay ridicules a too-common attitude: the religiouscondemnation of homosexuality. It's easy to be fooled intothinking that you're reading a genuine religious rant, but thetone is way too over the top for that...or is it? This could bea nightmarish, 1984-like view of the future for left-handed people.Left Handed Studiesis a very un-PC parody of the way colleges describe theirmulticultural offerings in course catalogs. This humor articleis part of Jay Obermark's CyberHut.Do you watch the Simpsons? How closely? Dave Hall presentshis summary of Left/Right Handed Simpsons.Handedness SurveysA HandPreference Questionnaireis available at the M.K. Holder's Primate Handedness and BrainLateralization site.The other handedness surveys seem to have disappeared.If you find any, please let me know.Personal Left-Handed Home PagesThis is a catch-all category.Rosemary West'sLeft-HandedPage has the most comprehensive set of links out there.(My list came first, but hers is better!)Wai-Hang Lam has a detailed personal homepage aboutLeft-handednessavailable, with his own interesting experience as well as a handednesstest. Lots of sub-pages.Also worth checking out isMy Left-Hander'sPageby Andrea Bieraugel.I'm also impressed by Molly Joy's essay onLefthandedness.Excellent wide-ranging article, with an actual bibliography.What's Left(by Lori Pringle),includes a top-ten left-handed pet-peeves list, as well as heruseful list of books about handedness and list of storesthat sell things for lefties.From the Netherlands, it's Rik Smits'The Left-HandedUniverse... A comprehensive site from an author of left-handedbooks. Graphical browser required; graphics-intensive site.(Also available in Dutch and German.)Janis Cortese's comprehensive and outspokenFor SouthPawsOnly is also full of information, including some excellent essays,another list of famous lefties, and some places to buy left-handedmerchandise.Peter E. Johnson, the "Left-Handed Patriot," has created theLeft Handed Homepageto list some home pages of lefties at Gustavus Adolphus College, aswell as some left-handed folks from around the world.Jerry Stearns has some information on Lefthander's Day.which is every August 13.Jerry also lists some information about Lefthander magazine andsome other useful info.(There's another brief tidbitabout Lefthander's Day available.)A page for lefthandersis by Matthijs Vleesch du Bois, in the Netherlands. Let's keep thatglobal awareness of left-handedness going...Matthijs has a list of left-handed celebrities (with aDutch and Flemish emphasis) and a list of left-handed links.In Treker L's Left Handed Page,"Treker L" presents some facts and comments about left-handedness,and a quick handedness test.S. Niemann has an attractively-presented list of left-handedresources atNobody Likes Lefties!.There's a left-handed person living in Singapore namedTommy Kwho has some left-handed links and briefly describes whatit's like to be left-handed in Singapore (a lot of dirty looks,apparently)."Tellim Harobed" has alefthandpage with a brief poem and some useful links.("Tellim Harobed" is really Deborah Millet...)Sinistra09 has a unique left-handed page calledTheLefty Page,including another list of left-handed celebrities and somefacts (with some etymology to come).Bramble has a page calledLeftOversthat might freak you out at first...but don't panic, keep reading.Some links and some businesses that I don't have here, aswell as a great Beatles theme and a novel approach.Some random left-handed facts are available from Steve Schrader'sDon'tFeel Left Out - Left Handed Thoughts.Maryalena's page has a left-handed section with a list ofleft-handed celebrities and some left-handed links,called TheLeft Zone.The Left Hand Home Pageby L.H. Jones is only a little bit about left-handedness; it's justthat this person's login name is "lfthnd." Follow L.H.'s links forconservative (i.e., right-wing) sites.Left-Handed SocietiesTheSecretSociety of Left Handershosted by "Lord Byron C" (who has several"Pages for Lefties" on his home page,Byron's World)is a secret society.Not for right-handed people...The SSLH has quite a few interesting newsletters (edited by Chade Hjelle).The Left-Hander's Club of IrelandThe National Association ofLeft-Handed Golfers (NALG)Businesses for Left-Handed PeopleSpeaking of left-handed golfers...I don't golf, but if I did, Icould go toThe Left Handed Golferto buy some equipment that I could actually use.The Left Handclaims to be "Your National Source for Left-Handed Products" andthey offer books, computer accessories, gifts, sports equipment,tools and much more.Colorado Boomerang'sHow to Boomerangmentions the fact they always have left-handed boomerangs for sale.The Left Hand Brewing Company iscertainly a unique name for these brewmeisters (I hope someonethere is actually left-handed).Now there's Southpaw,where you can buy guitars, amps, accessories and books.Did I mention the guitars were for left-handers?Speaking about left-handed guitars, check out Lefty's LeftHanded Guitar Chord Book.If you've ever needed a left-handed corkscrew and wondered whereyou could buy one, wonder no more:Donald A. Bull'sCorkscrewsfor Lefthanders to the rescue.My favorite buddy isBuddy The Left HandedWorm(a children's book by Norman Robertson that says it's all right to be different).Contour Design, Inc., has designed left-handed computer mice in several sizes.Southpaw Enterprisessells a number of goods, such as left-handed circular saws,kitchen knives, scissors, novelties, and so forth.And finally:Southpaw Pineappleis a company that sells various gift items and tools for left-handed people.Back-LinksThe following people link to this page and I'm returning the favor.In many cases, there are other left-handed links listed; I try toinclude EVERY left-handed resource here, but there may be siteslisted that I haven't found yet. I'm amazed by how global thislist is (Finland, Japan, Canada).Stephanie Alford, better known as the SEAMaiden, has aleft-handed link pageon her beautifully designedhome page.Sami Viskari in Finland links here onWiscar's linkpage.The Zwick Family Home Pageapparently proves that there are some left-handed members of the Zwickfamily.Mark Smiley's Home Page (on AOL) has a left-handed section.Kirby's Home Page(in Canada) is lefty-aware.Simon'slinks (in Germany) has some useful travel and other links in"Sites for Sore Eyes."I don't speak German, but I'm hazarding that "Linkshänder"means "Left-Hander," and on theInternet Center Marl- Interessantes zum Start page there's a link here by that title.

Contact

Please let me know if there's anothergood home page or left-handed resource that I've missed; also, pleaseinform me if one these links is broken -- although I do my best,it's hard to keep up with changes sometimes. Thanks!Also, I'd be happy to link back to you, if you let me know. It sometimestakes me a few weeks to get around to updating this page, soplease be patient if you don't hear from me right away.I do my best to answer questions that are sent to me, but I'mnot a scientist and I don't know about any research or storethat isn't listed on this page. Although rumored, I've neverbeen able to find out about scholarships for left-handed peopleand believe that there's no such thing. Good luck!Thanks for reading!I created this page in early 1995 when I was creating some[Facts About Me]This page is one of my most popular, often receiving hundreds of visitors a day.Zeigen's Dilemma  E. Stephen Mack (estephen@emf.net)
 

Comments

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essays

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living

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left-hander,

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other

left-handedness-related

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http://www.emf.net/~estephen/facts/lefthand.html

Living in the Mirror: A Left-Handed Home Page 2009 January

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Comments and essays about living as a left-hander, plus links to other left-handedness-related sites, including a large selection of scientific material.

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