Switch Hitters, Southpaws, and Sexuality? Is This a Thing??

Hello Mx. Thing! So I recently went out to dinner with a group of queer friends and as we were arranging seating, we realized that out of eight of us, four were left-handed. And I’m ambidextrous! That seemed like a lot, and it got me wondering… are the gays more likely to be left-handed? Is this a thing??

— Switch Hitter

Dear Switch Hitter,

This is such an interesting question! Lefties come up a lot in queer spaces and for good reason. If you’ve ever been involved in an argument online about the “social contagion” of transgender identities, you’ve probably seen the image above, which is intended to suggest that social acceptance of identities that were historically discouraged or disadvantaged tends to lead toward greater visible embodiment of those identities.

According to some very rudimentary math (I make no promises that this is accurate, I haven’t done binomial distribution for almost 30 years), if we assume the likelihood that any single person is left-handed to be around 10%, we can calculate the probability of half of a group of eight random people being left-handed to be around 1 in 200. Of course, a group of your queer friends is not random. You probably have a lot of things in common in addition to being queer that could also increase those probabilities.

That said, several studies have shown a statistically significant correlation between queer identities and left-handedness, especially for trans folks. While researchers haven’t come to a consensus on the causes for this, it is suspected to be similar to the autism spectrum connection that I talked about last month: probably some combination of genetic predisposition and chemical hormonal fetal conditions. (In fact, autists are also significantly more likely to be left-handed.)

Whenever I talk to left-handed friends about their family histories, the stories that emerge are hauntingly familiar. Grandparents whose knuckles were beaten bloody with rulers until they learned to write "correctly." Great-grandparents who had their left hands tied behind their backs in school, or bound to their desks with rope. Parents who were forced to stand facing the wall for hours as punishment for reaching for a pencil with the "wrong" hand. Children whose teachers slammed heavy books onto their fingers, who were told they were sinful, who learned that something fundamental about how their brain worked made the adults around them furious.

The systematic techniques used to force handedness conversion read like a manual for conversion therapy: physical restraints and corporal punishment, public humiliation and social isolation, shame-based messaging linking natural traits to moral deficiency, withholding of privileges and recognition, and religious frameworks that positioned difference as spiritual corruption requiring violent correction. Schools implemented specialized equipment—desks designed only for right-handed use, mandatory after-school "retraining" sessions designed specifically to eliminate left-handedness. Some institutions went further: plaster casts to immobilize left hands, or in extreme cases, even burning children's "wrong" hands to render them unusable.

These stories remind me of something the poet, comedian, and activist Alok said at a show I attended recently, about growing up queer, and the intergenerational trauma of being hated for who you are. "My job, my one assignment was to hide myself as a way to protect the pride of everyone else," they said. "I always felt like I was too much and never enough at the same time. The version of love that I grew up with... taught me that I had to betray myself in order to belong, taught me that I had to be as small as possible in order to have a community."

There are real parallels here. Both left-handedness and queerness have been pathologized, demonized, and subjected to violent "correction" attempts. Both have been associated with evil, with moral failing, with disruption of the natural order. I can't help but wonder if left-handedness became so deeply associated with witchcraft and the devil precisely because of whatever strange magic exists at the intersection of handedness, neurodivergence, and queerness—because societies and the people in power over them recognized, on some level, that these traits cluster together in ways that challenge rigid categories and threaten systems built on conformity.

Modern neuroscience confirms what survivors of forced conversion have long known: these attempts cause lasting neurological damage while failing to actually change handedness. And the trauma echoes across generations, creating families where natural ways of being became sources of shame and secrecy.

So yes, Switch Hitter—the correlation between queerness and left-handedness appears to be real, modest but consistent across studies. But more than that, we share something deeper: a history of being told that who we are fundamentally is wrong, and that love requires us to betray the most essential parts of ourselves.

Left-handedness rates plummeted to around 3% during the peak years of forced conversion, then climbed back to their natural 10-12% as those practices ended. Similarly, LGBTQ+ identification has risen dramatically across generations—not because queerness is "contagious," but because we, however briefly, faced less pressure to hide fundamental aspects of who we are.

When we stop torturing people for existing, we discover how many of us were here all along, waiting for permission to be ourselves.

STRAIGHT TO THE RIGHT

The word “right” (as in not-left) is associated with the word “straight” in numerous languages, and has been for centuries.

REFERENCE MATERIAL

Learn More about This Thing

▶ To Listen: the Gayish podcast “Left-handedness” episode

▶ To Read: The right hand : Left-handedness by Sir Daniel Wilson (1891)

▶ Bonus: check out this video from the Alok show and follow them!

Mx. Thing (they/them) is our resident LGBTQ+ advice columnist, specializing in queer convergence, curious coincidences, and questionable comorbidities. They cannot give you a diagnosis, but they might help you feel seen.

If you have a question for Mx. Thing, send it on over to [email protected] with “Is This a Thing?” in the subject line!