Abstract
This chapter focuses on the lived experience of handedness, especially left-handedness. It argues that left- and right-handers are not mirror image identical. Quantitatively, left-handers use their right hands more than right-handers use their left hands. Qualitatively, left-handers make much more use of lateral space near the body than right-handers do. Yet, left-handers are required to “act like a right-hander,” meaning they are constrained in their use of lateral space, permitted to use it only in those cases where right-handers also use lateral space, such as when throwing. There are no examples of the opposite phenomenon, where right-handers are asked to follow a left-handed norm. The chapter thus shows the depth of dexteronormativity and begins to illuminate structural inequalities that non-right-handers face, particularly through the concept of “misfit.”
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Notes
- 1.
As explained in Chap. 2, reliance on questionnaires that focus on which hand one uses, not how one uses hands in proximate space, dominates laterality studies. For examples and criticism see e.g., Annett (1970, 2002), Dragovic (2004), Hardie and Wright (2014), Kelley (2012), Oldfield (1971), Papadatou-Pastou et al. (2013), Peters (1998), Steenhuis et al. (1990), and Veale (2014).
Philosophers sometimes speak of hands (Kant’s “incongruent counterparts” most famously), but almost never of handedness or manual asymmetry. The few exceptions include e.g., Arnason (2017), Cornel (2020), and Serres (1997).
- 2.
McManus (2002) reports that 30% of left-handers use the “hooked” position, while 2–3% of right-handers do (McManus 2002, pp. 296–7). Szeligo et al. (2003) report that 60% of left-handers use the “inverted” posture (Szeligo et al. 2003, p. 264). There is thus some discrepancy in how this posture is measured: Szeligo et al. (2003), for example, measure “inversion” according to the angle of the pen (Szeligo et al. 2003, p. 266). Having observed hundreds of students performing the activity of handwriting, I can report incredible variety in left-handed handwriting postures, and in these admittedly unscientific observations less than 10% of left-handed writers are closed posture mirror images of right-handers.
- 3.
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Westmoreland, P. (2023). Act Like a Right-Hander: Right Hand Bias in Norms of Proximate Space Inhabitation. In: How Handedness Shapes Lived Experience, Intersectionality, and Inequality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23892-5_3
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