{"id":27619,"date":"2025-05-02T12:50:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T19:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=27619"},"modified":"2025-05-02T12:50:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T19:50:20","slug":"cartoon-left-handitude-is-on-the-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=27619","title":{"rendered":"Cartoon: Left Handitude Is On The Rise!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The guest artist for this strip is Naomi Rubin! <\/a>Naomi is a longtime friend of mine and a wonderful cartoonist. Her work is much more influenced by Japanese comics than mine or Becky’s, which provides a neat visual change of pace.<\/p>\n

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This graph from The Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0(which I swiped for the newspaper in panel 2) shows the story of the explosion in left handedness:<\/p>\n

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Julia Serano, whose writing is essential, commented<\/a>:<\/p>\n

During the twentieth century, in many Western countries, there was a precipitous rise in left-handedness. For instance, in Australia<\/a>, the prevalence of left-handed people increased from 2.0 percent to a whopping 13.2 percent! Apparently, a social contagion swept through these nations, and children suddenly began feeling peer pressure to experiment with handedness and to adopt left-handed identities. Then, the left-handed deviants began pushing their \u201cleft-hander agenda\u201d in order to recruit . . . oh, wait, sorry, that\u2019s not what happened at all.<\/p>\n

In actuality, left-handedness (like being transgender) is a part of human variation \u2014 both are pan-cultural trans-historical phenomena<\/a>. In the case of left-handedness, roughly 10 to 12 percent of children inexplicably express this tendency from as early as infancy. In the beginning of the twentieth century, there was intense stigma targeting left-handedness, which led parents and schools to force all children to be right-handed, often against their intrinsic preferences (this still happens in many places<\/a>). But eventually, there was a realization that this stigma was unnecessary and unfair, and people started letting children decide for themselves which hands to use. In other words, there wasn\u2019t really a rise in left-handedness so much as there was a rise in left-handed acceptance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The increasing numbers of people identifying as trans is, to a great extent, a result growing acceptance of trans identities. (Although that’s probably not the entire story<\/a>). The moral panic we’re seeing over this is just as foolish as panicking over the existence of lefties would be.<\/p>\n

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON<\/strong><\/p>\n

This cartoon has four panels. All the panels show a 1950s or 1960s married couple at breakfast at their kitchen table; the husband is reading a newspaper.<\/p>\n

PANEL 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

A big caption at the top says “1955.”<\/p>\n

HUSBAND: Oh no!<\/p>\n

WIFE: What’s wrong?<\/p>\n

HUSBAND: Left Handitude is on the rise!<\/p>\n

PANEL 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

The husband holds up the newspaper, which has a graph showing rapidly increasing left-handedness.<\/p>\n

HUSBAND: Look at this! When I was a kid in the twenties, you hardly ever met a left hander! Now five times as many self-identify as (choke! gasp!) leftwardsly!<\/p>\n

PANEL 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

A close-up of the husband, looking disturbed and suspicous.<\/p>\n

HUSBAND: What could be causing this unnatural increase? It must be a social contagion! Or sinistrous adults grooming naive youth with their sick southpaw ideology!<\/p>\n

PANEL 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

The wife has a hand on her chin, looking thoughtful; the husband makes a dismissive gesture.<\/p>\n

WIFE: Maybe it’s because we stopped whipping kids who write with their left hand?<\/p>\n

HUSBAND: Don’t be ridiculous.<\/p>\n

CHICKEN FAT WATCH<\/strong><\/p>\n

PANEL 1 – The character Link from Legend of Zelda<\/em>\u00a0is sitting on a shelf. Link is known to be left-handed.<\/p>\n

There’s a phrenology head sculpture on a lower shelf.<\/p>\n

The back of the newspaper says “IKE IN LEFTY SCANDAL!”<\/p>\n

PANEL 2 – The newspaper is called “Right-Washed Tribune,” with the tag line “Right News Writing For Rightly Right-Thinking Righties.” The main story is “Leftism Epidemic! President Calls for Widespread Panic.” Another story is “Has Leftism Gone Too Far? Six Normal-Handed Writers Opine.” Another story: “Study: Left Handed Scissors More Stabby.” And finally, in the smallest print: “Cartoonist blames text too tiny to read on left handed typesetters.”<\/p>\n

PANEL 3 – There’s a pattern of left hands holding pencils in the background.<\/p>\n

PANEL 4 – A Scottish Fold (which Naomi informs me is a breed of cat) is lying on the table, reading a copy of “Cat Fancy,” with the story “My human was a left hander! Fuzzle Winkles explains her secret pain.”<\/p>\n

A picture on the wall is the “Flamel” symbol from Full Metal Alchemist.<\/p>\n

Another picture is Ned Flanders from The Simpsons<\/em>\u00a0(famously left handed). His left hand is mysteriously moving in front of the picture frame.<\/p>\n

A self-portrait of Naomi as a jack ‘o lantern is peering in the window.<\/p>\n

The newspaper the husband is reading now says “Readers go blind straining to read tiny upside down text. Might it be a lefty plot?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The guest artist for this strip is Naomi Rubin! Naomi is a longtime friend of mine and a wonderful cartoonist. Her work is much more influenced by Japanese comics than mine or Becky’s, which provides a neat visual change of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics","category-lesbian-gay-bi-trans-and-queer-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27622,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27619\/revisions\/27622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}