My Mother Was Left-Handed — And How That Connects to “Trans trending.”

Jennifer R. Povey
4 min readMar 23, 2022
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

There’s a very strong perception that the number of transgender people has gone up. And people think that it’s a “trend” or a “fad” to be transgender or nonbinary.

Guess what has also gone up over the last few decades?

The number of left-handed people. No, seriously.

My Mother Was Left-Handed — and Was Abused For It

My mother, Valerie Anne Richards, was born right after World War II. She was old enough to dimly remember rationing.

She was old enough to be beaten for being left-handed.

And no, she did not go to a religious school.

In elementary school, every time my mother tried to write with her left hand, the teacher would come over with a ruler and smack her hand hard…a move which risked injury.

This did not get my mother to write with her right hand.

Instead, my mother didn’t learn to write until secondary school. They stopped beating her and she, surprise surprise, learned to write.

My mother was very left-handed. She wasn’t capable of passing as right-handed. But what happened to her was normal. Being left-handed was unacceptable.

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Jennifer R. Povey

I write about fantasy, science fiction and horror, LGBT issues, travel, and social issues.