The mug example is an excellent example of systemic or institutional bias.
It’s worth explaining.
No one sat down and said “we’re only going to make right handed mugs”.
It’s just that most people and therefore most designers are right handed so when they are designing the mug they imagine it in their own hand. Et voilà, most mugs are for right handers.
This goes one step further: a template is made for said right hand mug, now all the left handed designers are also designing right handed mugs.
If you go down to Unfavourable Perceptions, there’s a load of info on this. Efforts in North America to switch everyone to right-handedness ended around ghe 60s and lefties were more socially accepted by the late 70s. That said there’s still a lot of places in Asia that attempt to force lefties to be righties.
My mum is a leftie and in school was beaten for writing with her left hand.
The mug example is an excellent example of systemic or institutional bias.
It’s worth explaining.
No one sat down and said “we’re only going to make right handed mugs”.
It’s just that most people and therefore most designers are right handed so when they are designing the mug they imagine it in their own hand. Et voilà, most mugs are for right handers.
This goes one step further: a template is made for said right hand mug, now all the left handed designers are also designing right handed mugs.
There’s also the fact that there was a concerted effort to beat left-handedness out of people for a very very long time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people
If you go down to Unfavourable Perceptions, there’s a load of info on this. Efforts in North America to switch everyone to right-handedness ended around ghe 60s and lefties were more socially accepted by the late 70s. That said there’s still a lot of places in Asia that attempt to force lefties to be righties.
My mum is a leftie and in school was beaten for writing with her left hand.
Hopefully we’re now in a slightly more enlightened time.
Dare to dream…