A recent article by a left-handed writer summarized very well the centuries-old unreasonable and unfeeling discrimination which society has imposed on left-handed persons. He told how growing up in the New York public schools in the 1930s and 1940s meant repeated whacks from teachers who tried to force him to write with his right hand.
This writer reminded us that anti-left-handed bias is enshrined even in the language of Western civilization. The Latin for left hand, “sinister,” translates into evil in English. The French for left hand, “gauche,” means crude or awkward in English.
When the mistaken belief that enlightened education should endeavor to correct left-handedness was finally relegated to the junk heap of quack psychology, a remarkable fact occurred in U.S. statistical annals. Between 1932 and 1970, the recorded percentage of left-handed people rose from 2% to 10% of our population. Since it is incredible that the percentage actually increased so dramatically, the statistics could reflect a new willingness of southpaws to admit they are different, or the anonymous bureaucrats’ willingness to admit that left-handedness is just as normal as right-handedness, or both.
Modern scientific, medical, and psychological opinion now teaches that it is wrong—physically and psychologically—for teachers to try to force left-handers to be right-handers. I wonder if, a few decades hence, writers will comment as condescendingly on the peculiar pedagogical passion of the 1970s and 1980s to force boys to abandon their boyishness and girls to abandon their girlishness.
Those who have not kept up with trends in the classroom would be surprised to learn how pervasive this passion is. An oppressive determination to eradicate the natural gender traits of youngsters extends from primary-grade readers to career-guidance materials used in high schools.
Despite all the attempts to blur gender identity by, for example, showing pictures of girls playing with snakes and boys using hair spray, and even to pervert the English language by forcing schoolchildren to use such pronouns as he/she or s/he, there is no evidence that human nature is changing. The attempt to change it confuses the youth and frustrates the adults.
A case in point is a recent hilarious article in the Washington Post called “Boys Just Want to Have Guns.” The Post’s staff writer admitted that her three-year-old son, and the sons of all her pacifist-feminist-yuppie friends, despite their parents’ persistent efforts (bringing them up sex-neutral, with no toy guns, and no TV except “Sesame Street”), nevertheless are naturally, irrepressibly male: boyish, aggressive, and fascinated by guns.
In addition, she moaned, the daughters of “what used to be the Berkeley left,” given trucks and airplanes, still go for dolls and dress up with jewelry. “The boys slug each other and the girls paint their fingernails. Where are they getting this stuff?” she asks.
In the late 1970s, the major textbook publishers, such as Macmillan and McGraw Hill, published “guidelines for the elimination of sexism,” which listed the words, illustrations, and concepts that would henceforth be censored out of all textbooks. This impudent intolerance galloped unchecked through school materials, so now the feminists have presumed to rewrite children’s stories in order to teach that women are strong and men are bad.
Once upon a time, children read a charming allegory about “The Little Steam Engine That Could.” It told how the little engine, with a lot of effort and another engine’s help, climbed a mountain.
The currently used edition published by Scholastic, Inc., identifies itself on the title page as “The Complete, Original Edition retold by Wally Piper.” What does “retold” mean? It means that the good, kind, hard-working engines in the story are identified as female, while the bad, arrogant, selfish engines are identified as male.
Those who would like to read more about the tyrannical techniques used by radical feminists to force unnatural cultural and legal changes on our society should try to get a new book called “Manhood Redux: Standing Up to Feminism” by C. H. Freedman, a columnist for the New York City Tribune (Samson Publishers, 719 Midwood Station, Brooklyn, NY 11230, $7.95). Yes, I said “try” to get it; it is unlikely that the feminists will tolerate it in bookstores or libraries.
