My Left-Handed Grandmother and Other Stigmatized Schoolkids

 

I love this photo of my grandmother, who was born in 1901, and immigrated to the US as a tot. Sweet, yes? But wait! I'm posting this to tell you that she was adjudged a rebellious delinquent at the ripe age of six.

Why? Well, because she started school--and kept picking up her pencil in her left hand. Every time the teacher saw her do that, the teacher would hit her hand hard with a ruler and yell at her for being disobedient. And yet, Rachel would do it again. She was judged wayward and ungovernable by her teacher--a child who would never amount to anything. Another "unruly, ignorant, immigrant Jew."

Facing such stigma, eventually my grandmother trained herself not to use her naturally-dominant left hand, and to write with her right. But her introduction to schooling had been traumatic.

I tell you this story now because it helps explain why, at the time my grandmother started school, only about 3% of children were reported to be left-handed. As the social stigma associated with being left-handed came to be seen as unfair and unnecessary, that rate would rise. In 1920 it was 5% of American children who were found to be left-handed. By 1930 it was 7%. In 1940 10% of schoolchildren were left-handed, and by the early 1960s, the rate was a bit under 12%, at which point it stopped rising. It's still a bit under 12% today. You can see the change over time in this chart:

 

Today, there's a great deal of social commentary about the fact that the percentage of youths with gender-expansive identities--transgender, nonbinary--is rising substantially. On the political right, a whole lot of people are screeching that this is due to their being "groomed" by adults and duped or seduced into having these "unnatural" identities. But even on the left, a lot of cis people are uneasy about the increase, and consider it a strange "fad."

Both of those perspectives presume that there is something bad or at least dubious about trans-identification and its rise. I'm here to point out that actually, it's the fact that more people--especially young ones--see clearly that there is nothing wrong with being a gender minority, that accounts for the rise. If you see the social stigma and shame aimed at trans and/or nonbinary people as unnecessary and unfair, you will accept trans-identification with a smile or a shrug. And when people aren't being punished for their gender identity being atypical, they'll go ahead and express that, and the rates will rise.

There's nothing sinister about that. And yes, I use that the word "sinister" to remind people that it is simply the Latin word for "left". Being prejudiced against left-handed people is a weird, ancient superstition in Western culture. It's a lot older than prejudice against gender-expansive identities.

Don't panic when young people aren't right-handed. Don't panic when they aren't cisgender. They'll be fine--if you let them be who they are, instead of torturing them for being atypical.