Dexterous, ambidextrous, or sinister?

thecolourbox

The left handed prejudice is for the same reason as people saying "bless you" after a sneeze, saluting crows, not using umbrellas indoors and thinking of the same black cat crossing someone's path as lucky or unlucky depending on who it is. People on the whole are stupid and believe in superstition instead of having to think about things properly

bertie

thecolourbox said:

The left handed prejudice is for the same reason as people saying "bless you" after a sneeze, saluting crows, not using umbrellas indoors and thinking of the same black cat crossing someone's path as lucky or unlucky depending on who it is. People on the whole are stupid and believe in superstition instead of having to think about things properly

 there is historical evidence linking its origins to hand shaking/greeting with right hand due to sword/weapon, so borne from something tangible, unlike pure superstition.  

CHRISB50

I’m left handed. I don’t think I’m sinister although others may disagree. 

I’ve never really found it a disadvantage in life. More frustrating…

Try finding the guitar you like, in the colour you like. 

Or writing with a fountain pen. 

Or not smudging whatever you wrote, with said fountain pen. 

Mattharrier

axisus said:

Ambidextrous is very rare, it's being equally good with either hand. Most people who say they are, aren't.

I'm 'either-handed', in that I will use either hand for most tasks. I can't swap hands for racket sports (hence not ambidextrous), but I use either left or right hand for most things without a second thought.

Weird thing: I work all day on a mac doing graphics. I use the mouse exclusively left handed at work and exclusively right handed at home. In the old days I used a mac and a PC at work, I used to get strange looks as I would sit there with a hand on each mouse to do work at times!

Cross-dominance - I am left handed, because I write with my left hand. My master eye is my left, so I shoot, play pool etc left handed. However I am, in reality, right handed with a few things being left handed. I kick a ball, bounce or throw a ball, play guitar, golf, tennis, use a mouse, right handed, and I'm useless at all of those things with my left hand.

I am pretty close to truly ambidextrous when it comes to using a hammer or a saw - I switch between the two as one hand/arm gets tired, or if it's easier.

Shrews

I am mixed-handed (either-handed) not ambidextrous. 

- Write right handed
- Southpaw stance
- Grab things with my left
- Use a bat with my right
- Two footed playing football when I was a kid, now more right footed


Playing guitar never made any sense to me playing right-handed until I tried to learn with a left-handed guitar then it became easier. 

It doesn't cause me any issues in life! 

Snags

The reason that lefties are feared, scorned, abused and considered evil is the same as it ever was: all the normies can't cope when faced with natural superiority.

usedtobe

Surely it’s better if it feels like someone else is doing it. Better still if someone else is actually doing it..?

CHRISB50

Mattharrier said:

Cross-dominance - I am left handed, because I write with my left hand. My master eye is my left, so I shoot, play pool etc left handed. However I am, in reality, right handed with a few things being left handed. I kick a ball, bounce or throw a ball, play guitar, golf, tennis, use a mouse, right handed, and I'm useless at all of those things with my left hand.

I am pretty close to truly ambidextrous when it comes to using a hammer or a saw - I switch between the two as one hand/arm gets tired, or if it's easier.

I’m similar, in that I write with my left hand. I kick a ball left footed. I’m left eye dominant so aim and shoot from my left shoulder. 

I do pretty much everything else right handed. Knife and fork, mouse, golf. 

I can use scissors with either hand. 

ICBM

There's quite a lot of left-handedness in my family, from my mother's side - and both my sister and my eldest daughter are strongly left-handed. I'm right-handed, but much closer to mixed-handed than most right-handed people - although like most here, not ambidextrous. I can do a lot of things with either hand, some equally well and some not, and do a few things that most right-handers use their right hand for, naturally with my left.

I'm not certain where the prejudice against left-handedness comes from, but it's definitely something (Christian) religious.

Headphones

I've met very many commanding officers of Royal Navy warships.  I've not met a right handed one yet...

Could be a statistical anomaly I suppose.

HAL9000

CHRISB50 said:

I can use scissors with either hand. 

I was under the impression that scissors are right-handed and that it’s the shearing motion of the blades sliding across each other that makes them work. I thought that using normal (right-handed) scissors in the left hand didn’t work due to the pressure  between the shearing faces becoming less. Am I wrong? Or do you use left-handed scissors?

rogd

My brother was left handed and slightly dyslexic. He also had a nasty habit of falling over for no reason, the doctor reckoned that was due to some sort of imbalance of his inner ears.
I'm right handed and only fall over for the usual reasons!!
Our number 2 daughter is seriously dyslexic and left handed but annoyingly brainy.
Our grand daughter by number 1 daughter is mixed handed and also annoyingly brainy.
There is no history of left handedness in Mrs rog's family.
I've often wondered if its genetic and passed down, skipping a generation now and then.
Our Chris, who would have been 81 now, never suffered having his left hand tied behind his back, but was constantly nagged to use his right hand.

Kilgore

Headphones said:

I've met very many commanding officers of Royal Navy warships.  I've not met a right handed one yet...

Could be a statistical anomaly I suppose.

As it's the Navy, the correct term would be starboard handed. 

CoffeeAndTV

The males on my dads side of the family are ambidextrous. My dad, son, nephews, and me.  

Causes all sorts of problems, we have trouble knowing left and right, we take time making decisions on which hand is used for the knife and fork etc. 

PolarityMan

BillDL said:

As @bertie has mentioned, being left-handed has had advantages and disadvantages through historical warfare.  Left-handed soldiers are able to thrust the sword around a solid spiral staircase (as found in castles and other old buildings) at an adversary while still using the stonework to shield themselves.  They are obviously at a disadvantage on a staircase that is anticlockwise, and vice versa for right-handed soldiers.

I am somewhat of an expert at medieval combat after playing a significant amount of Elden Ring. When  conducting conduct on a spiral stair case it is best to roll around frantically and then get stabbed in the face. 

BillDL

I am equally shite on the guitar with either hand fretting.

LastMantra

Philly_Q said:

BillDL said:

As @bertie has mentioned, being left-handed has had advantages and disadvantages through historical warfare.  Left-handed soldiers are able to thrust the sword around a solid spiral staircase (as found in castles and other old buildings) at an adversary while still using the stonework to shield themselves.  They are obviously at a disadvantage on a staircase that is anticlockwise, and vice versa for right-handed soldiers.

It also depends on whether you're going up or down.

That's what I was thinking. 

Tannin

guitars4you said:

Not sure if true or not by I was told that left handed people are generally far more ambidextrous - Think it came from a cricket chat one day - As they were talking about Broad, Anderson and Stokes who all bowl right handed yet bat left handed - And there are many other examples

There is a host of famous and very talented guitar players who are left handed, yet play the 'conventional/right handed' way

Guitar is a both-hands instrument. Right-handed vs left-handed makes no difference to your ability.* 

Bowl right, bat left is right-handed all day long. Batting "wrong handed" like Stokes or Finch or Sobers (or me!) simply indicates that the player is a backhander. Think of tennis: most players are stronger on the forehand, but almost as many are devastating on the backhand and not quite so good on the forehand. It's the same with a cricket bat: some of us naturally see the top hand as the "main" hand and a cut shot is more-or-less the same thing as a backhand volley. Others regard the bottom hand as the "main" hand. Either way, we use our best hand (right for a right-hander) as the "main" hand. 

(Most of us also do other "big stick" tasks the same way. For example, I swing an axe with my right hand at the top. It's not actually "left-handed" at all, but the term is used for it.

Back on the topic more generally, I'm right-handed but have learned to be quite capable with my left, not least from all those years of electronics repair where there are lots of little out-of-sight and hard-to-reach things you can't quite get at with one hand or the other, you have to be able to use either. Same with all sorts of machinery - try servicing a tractor with only one "good" hand: you can't.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* (Except - and I'm guessing this bit - that maybe someone who was very strongly handed one way or other might struggle. E.g., suppose that you were extremely right-handed and really no good at all doing things with your left hand - you'd never make a good guitarist because of your weak left hand. Or vice-versa. But is any real person actually "ultra-handed" like this? I don't know.)

LastMantra

I'm neither.

p90fool

HAL9000 said:

CHRISB50 said:

I can use scissors with either hand. 

I was under the impression that scissors are right-handed and that it’s the shearing motion of the blades sliding across each other that makes them work. I thought that using normal (right-handed) scissors in the left hand didn’t work due to the pressure  between the shearing faces becoming less. Am I wrong? Or do you use left-handed scissors?

No that's correct, as a left hander I have to contort my hand a little so that the blades are brought together, which happens naturally for a right hander. 

It seems to work better if I stick my tongue out of the side of my mouth like a 5 year old too.