5:30pm July 24, 2014

Years ago, I had a weird conversation.

youneedacat:

I was explaining to someone the history of left-handedness in America, the ways that left-handed people were treated, it was considered okay to beat us until we became right-handed, and other things like that.

And instead of listening to me, the person’s only response was to roll her eyes and say “Oh God, please tell me they’re not trying to claim to be an oppressed minority.”

Which, no, I’ve never heard a left-hander claim that. But at the time in question, we were part of an oppressed minority: disability. Because left-handedness was literally, in and of itself, considered to be a learning disability with symptoms that went well beyond using your left hand for things (there was an entire list of symptoms from clumsiness to language problems). My mother grew up in that time and she was definitely considered disabled just for being left-handed. The fact that things have changed and now left-handers are not disabled, does not mean we weren’t disabled then.

But I found that person’s response really obnoxious. She basically had this worldview where there were “real” oppressed minorities, mostly people of color, and that everyone else was just “copying people of color” and not really oppressed, or not really very oppressed, when she’d grudgingly acknowledge oppression existed. So her very first worry when hearing about brutality towards an entire kind of person wasn’t what happened to the people in question, it was whether they’d try and “steal” oppressed minority status from those who really deserved it.

Which, as a left-handed person very grateful to grow up in a time and place where left-handedness is not a disability? Rubbed me the wrong way.

And yes, my view of what is and isn’t a disability is that it’s heavily depending on society. I’ve gotten in trouble before for saying that for a long time, gay people were disabled because of our inclusion in the DSM and our treatment by psychiatry. But it’s true. We were disabled at that point. We managed to climb our way out of that category, just as left-handers and some other people have managed to climb out of that category. But it doesn’t mean that we weren’t disabled at some point in time. Because whether you’re disabled isn’t just about your body — that’s one part of it, but social status as disabled is equally as important as physical or cognitive status. And it’s perfectly possible to be disabled entirely because you’re put in the social category of disabled people, even if you have no particular bodily or cognitive impairments.

But whenever I try to explain that, I get someone who flips out on me and insists that I’m trying to bring back the idea of gay people as disabled under the DSM. Which, just, no. I’m saying that when we were in the DSM, we were disabled because we were in the DSM and faced ableism, especially psychiatric ableism, the same as everyone else in the DSM. So don’t bother flipping out, it’s been done, it doesn’t do anything except cause aggravation.

I am left handed, and I grew up with family friends who had lived through this period in the US. Their hands had been tied down, and they were beaten severely, in one case to the point of broken bones. One of these family friends would still write with her right hand, which I couldn’t understand at the time (I was a little kid) but now understand that writing with her left hand gave her flashbacks and panic attacks.

It was a bad scene.

There are still countries where left-handedness is considered a disability! China, for one. I have had a lot of conversations with left-handed Chinese people when they see me writing Chinese characters with my left hand (the myth that “you can’t write Chinese characters with your left hand” is used to justify a lot of this shit.)

I remember a particular conversation with a fellow tourist in Kunming, who saw me signing hotel forms left handed. The conversation was in Chinese, I’m translating loosely.

“You’re using your left hand?” (I got asked this a lot, because it’s so unusual.)

“Yeah, I’m left-handed.”

“They told me I couldn’t do that! That that was impossible! I’m so mad! So fucking mad!”

in case anyone is wondering if this stuff still happens.