Top 9 amazing things to know about left-handed people (they are also human beings)
It may seem trivial: what difference can there be between a child who will grab his rattle with his right hand and one who will prefer the left hand? The first will grow up in a world built for him, will use tools designed to optimize his activity, the other will make him drool over everything he writes with a fountain pen, will suck at foosball, will struggle to use normal scissors and will have to admit that right-handed scissors are called “normal scissors”. The life of a right-handed person is a long quiet river, that of a left-handed person is a long struggle. Encounter with this people of the mirror :
1-To be left-handed is above all a man’s thing
According to the latest census of left-handed people, there are 6 left-handed boys for every 4 girls. In total, according to figures from lesgauchers.com (you read that right…), left-handed people represent 12.7% of the population. Look around you, among the 6 colleagues around you, there must be a left-handed person (or the HRD has filtered out at the entrance).
2-Being left-handed is a bit of genetics and a lot of knowledge.
If both of your parents are left-handed, you will not be congratulated, but you will have a 26% chance of being left-handed yourself. That’s twice the average, so heredity is a factor. But for the rest, it is the environment that will decide your “laterality”.
3-One theory is that the position of the fetus in the last trimester decides who is left-handed.
And also the position of the child at birth. Most fetuses are oriented upside down with the right ear towards the front of the mother. As a result, the little guy is going to use his left side for balance, which frees up his right limbs to explore things (what, we don’t want to know…), so he will become right-handed. We are “born” therefore mostly right-handed, but paradoxically, we became so through prenatal training.
4-One would become left-handed by ultrasound
2011 study complementary to the previous one: laterality would be partly the consequence of prenatal ultrasound. The fetus is bombarded with ultrasounds, it is not well, changes position, and bam! It is placed on its right side and “explores” with its left side. That’s how you make a little left-handed baby with ultrasounds.
5-Most horses are left-handed
Maybe because there’s no one to piss them off and force them to write with the right hoof.
6-Left-handed people would be stronger in math
The idea was quite good: left-handed people are less likely to use their left hemisphere for language, so they would be more likely to excel in math. In reality, according to various studies, this is bullshit, even though the left-handed lobby points out that the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube (Mr. Rubik, therefore) was left-handed. Okay. But so are Raymond Domenech and Stéphane Bern.
7-There are more left-handed people among people with mental health problems.
The rate of left-handedness among schizophrenics is about 20%. In general, mental or neurological disorders (dyslexia, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) are more common among left-handed people according to information from the Wall Street Journal.
8-Left-handed men, on average, earn more money than right-handed men.
This is the result of a study conducted by economists who didn’t give a damn (it’s not like there’s a global crisis and all that…). How do you explain this? The study doesn’t give us proper information, so we can imagine: left-handed people write badly, they go to medical school, get a PhD and earn more than anyone else with a PhD. And, except for pharmacists, nobody blames them for writing badly anymore.
9-Left-handed people are not automatically homosexual (and vice versa).
It seems obvious, but curiously, the possible relationship between sexuality and laterality seems to excite researchers. A 2002 study found that lesbians are slightly more often left-handed than straight men, but the tendency is not found in men. The following year, the opposite was true, with many left-handed gays in the panel, but not too many lesbians. What should we think about this, except that these researchers would do better to look for a real job?
