Dawkins describes trans ID as a meme

[nythbran2]

Very surprised he didn't say this year's earlier (or did I miss it?). Still an unpleasant man though. www.thetimes.com/article/3f4adf27-3fb8-463a-9c1c-3a90ba605b2f?shareToken=0f280c08e52b86d1cd6b0cd7a3a7b3ba

Not sure how a prenatal scan would pick up 'handedness' unless you were keeping a diary...Day 150 in the big mother house, quite warm & cosy but wish she'd stop eating gherkins, will have to kick around a bit to show my displeasure...

With Archery, your ocular dominance is important. Some people have a dominant right eye, but are left-handed (or vice versa) although it is more usual for dominant eye and hand to match. As you need your dominant eye to be closest to the string to get greater accuracy with your aim, a person with right eye dominance should use a 'right handed bow' whether they are right or left handed (or vice versa). Of course longbows are not 'handed' so a beginner archer can easily play about with the same bow and experiment with what works best for them, but going with your ocular dominance will make aiming far more straight forward.

I've seen a few young people write this way recently. I don't understand why they don't correct them when they start writing, it is such a disadvantage.

I suppose it's because they don't want to spend class time on practicing writing.

I had this issue with pistol shooting. Right handed, left eye dominant. It is no issue with a rifle with a scope because you can't really use the "wrong" eye, but it is easy to muck it up, without really realizing, with a pistol.

You sound ambidextrous, which is lucky.

I would give my left arm to be ambidextorous.

😂

It's the thumb the baby sucks in the womb. Guaranteed indicator of innate handedness.

Not something I would necessarily describe myself as though ... especially if icing a cake 😱

My mother and my mother in law are both left handed and use their cutlery with knife in the left.

I have never thought they were anything but graceful eaters. They both had/have beautiful penmanship too. In fact, I haven’t noticed that they do/did anything without grace.

I swap hands depending on what I'm doing. If I'm shovelling food down my pie hole I use the fork or spoon in my dominant (right) hand. If I'm cutting something up, I use my knife in my dominant hand.

Occular dominance and handedness matching is why driving on the left - right hand drive - is safer than driving on the right. The dominant hand is always on the steering wheel and the dominant eye is seeing oncoming traffic.

Yes, that does make sense. Although I do wonder if it goes back further than that. Driving on the left when driving horses might also match the most common ocular and hand dominance (ergo be safer), which is why it stayed that way as cars came in?

...which raises a question. Why do most countries drive on the right hand side?

Also, if writing from left to right is easier when right handed, why doesn't every writing system do that if right handedness is more common than left handedness?

I vaguely remember something about right to left evolving from rock carving. I can see if your non dominant hand is just holding a chisel, carving right to left would be easier.

with our eyes always pointing in the same direction (unless you are staring at your nose for some reason), I don't see how ocular dominance is important in driving. Also with respect to objects more than a metre away, the L-R horizontal position of each eye isn't significant either.

With power steering and/or automatic transmission, the handedness of a driver doesn't seem to matter as much as it perhaps did.

But it's interesting generally, how the dominant hand might have influenced (or not) various objects in the world.

...which raises a question. Why do most countries drive on the right hand side?

Napoleon in Europe, and the need for an armed sidekick on stagecoaches in the US.

I've just remembered another very subtle example of handedness, which is playing cards. Waddingtons are ambidextrous, but a lot of others are right handed, which is a PITA if - as I do - you find yourself naturally fanning left handed.

wow, I've played a lot (a LOT) of poker and I didn't ever think of that (right handed privilege showing, perhaps)

If you use 4-pipped cards you wouldn't. It's when you have the (generally cheap and nasty) 2-pipped ones you realise. You fan them out and have no idea what number they are.

Then, Google is invented and ... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spinning-Poodle-Games-Handed-Playing/dp/B09RWXR1M6

I was told the direction of spiral staircases in castles is also related to handedness.

Yeah it's widely believed, that one. So that the defenders (fighting downhill) have their right arm on the outside.

@SerendipityJane : I exclusively use Piatnik plastics, which I think are 4-pipped.

Of course if I wanted an unfair advantage, I would invite friends to play with a left handed deck ...

Seems a weird omission for a tiny fraction of ink on the manufacturers part.

Anyone else loving how a trans thread has degenerated into complete non sequiturs ? We're posting in a metaphor.

Yep. I think Dawkins would approve of thoughtful meanderings. Live and learn (to think and question).

Thread digressions are often my favourite bits. Definitely more like real conversations and usually, in the MN/FWR context, you can follow the evolution or, to put it another way, the thread.