Fables of the deconstruction

Imagine, if you will, a land where most people are right-handed: where most tools, office supplies, musical instruments, sporting equipment and other common products are designed for right-handers; where Kindergarten instructions in fine motor skills like drawing or crafting are aimed at right-handed children; and where right-handedness is generally assumed to be everyone’s mode of holding a pen, a fork, or a phone. Now in this land, the relatively few left-handed people have learned to live with these constant small slights and inconveniences, and many of them have, of necessity, become functionally ambidextrous—otherwise they’d be forever stuck with upside-down guitars and mouse pads on the wrong side of their desks.

But imagine that the lefties eventually start to resent their second-class position and all the little insults that go with it. Imagine that, over time, their unity as a group—in contrast to the right-handers, who are otherwise so varied they don’t really see themselves as a single culture—gains them a measure of political clout, and they persuade the government and other big institutions to mandate accommodation of left-handed employees and clients. Next, imagine that left-handedness is posited as not just a quality to accept but a special credential to recognize, and that anyone in public service is expected to switch hands when circumstances (like the selection of available stationery or hardware) dictate.