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Harms of Handedness

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How Handedness Shapes Lived Experience, Intersectionality, and Inequality

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Abstract

This chapter continues investigation of potential harms of handedness. It draws ideas from several feminist theories to develop a preliminary framework to evaluate the severity of multiple forms of harm to which left-handers are subjected ranging from stereotypes in biological research to social stigmatization to impediments related to body schematization. It argues that we can plausibly compare left-handers to oppressed minorities, even if harms of handedness differ significantly from those that paradigmatically oppressed groups face.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a similar explication of Frye, see Higgins (2019, pp. 4–6). This article also focuses on Frye, Young, and Cudd. For a constructive critical reading of Frye, see Card (1986).

  2. 2.

    The connection should also be drawn here to treatment of race, disability, and immigration, especially at sites like Ellis Island that were vital to the physiological and visual coding of difference. See e.g., Dolmage (2018).

  3. 3.

    An exception: both left- and right-handers seem to believe that left-handers are more creative, even though they are not. See e.g., Grimshaw and Wilson (2013).

  4. 4.

    Evidence connecting left-handers to creativity is mixed at best. Lindell (2011) makes the case that left-handers’ brains are likely lateralized in ways that would promote creativity, while Van der Feen et al. (2020) find that left-handers were less creative at problem-solving and equally artistically creative as right-handers, even as left-handers believed they were more creative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. St. Petersburg College, St. Petersburg, FL, USA

    Peter Westmoreland

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Westmoreland, P. (2023). Harms of Handedness. In: How Handedness Shapes Lived Experience, Intersectionality, and Inequality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23892-5_7

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