Decades ago, I needed to cut something in my office at work.  I don’t remember quite was it was nor why I needed to cut that paper; it didn’t matter.  I didn’t have a pair of scissors, so I wandered out to find a pair.  My teammates shared an office across the hall; I made it that far.  I asked my teammate if he had a pair that I might borrow.  He reaches into his desk drawer, pulls out a pair of scissors, and hands them to me.  However, he warns me that they’re left-handed scissors.

“Surely, he toys with me”, I thought.  I did not believe that such thing as left-handed scissors existed.  I simply took the scissors and started to cut, or more accurately I tried to cut.  Though I genuinely tried, I could not get those scissors to function.  Obviously, I could pull the blades apart and then back together, but they didn’t cut paper.  My friend charitably cut the item for me.  I played the fool; left-handed scissors actually exist.

The source of the confusion?  I reasoned that if there was such a thing as left-handed scissors, there must be such a thing as right-handed scissors.  Logically, right-handed scissors would be called… [pause for emphasis] right-handed scissors.  However, we refer to the right-handed variety as scissors (without the specifier), and we simply call both types of scissors collectively as ‘scissors’.

We imply the ‘right-handed’ qualifier

First, the difference between the two types of scissors lies with more than simply the way the holes fit your hand.  On right-handed scissors, the top blade (closest to you) is aligned northwest to southeast; on left-handed scissors, they’re reversed.  Yes, it matters.  Search for them on Amazon and look at pictures if you don’t believe me.

Second, we imply the right-handed qualifier with scissors.  If we don’t mention “left-handed”, we assume that they fit right-handed people.  We use this convention so prevalently that I, as I’m sure many others, did not believe that left-handed scissors existed.  Statistically, left-handed people make up about 10% of the population.

Naturally, we don’t limit this to qualifier to scissors.  We do not label ergonomic mice for right-handed people as such, we simply call them ergonomic mice.  If we design different versions of practically anything for hand dominance, we label the left-handed version as such, but not the right-handed version.

Sadly, this language structure leads us to gloss over the needs of left-handed people; we exclude them.  It’s not done intentionally or with malice, but we still do it.  When we supply an office with ergonomic mice or a classroom with scissors, do we allocate 10% of them for left-handed people?  Even the wording sounds funny; we should get 90% scissors and 10% left-handed scissors.

We are more likely to accommodate vegetarians and vegans over left-handed people.

We also imply the ‘straight’ qualifier

When we hear the word ‘couple’, we will likely picture a heterosexual couple.  Sure, statistically heterosexual people make up a much higher segment of the population; I won’t debate that.  However, since we imply the ‘straight’ qualifier so often, we gloss over our biases about heterosexuality.  Simply put, we accept heterosexuality (almost invisibly so), yet we treat homosexuality as taboo.  Furthermore, when we explicitly call out those biases, we refuse to acknowledge it for what it is…  homophobia.

Few will debate that Snow White is age appropriate for children.  There is nothing overtly sexualized about the story line.  Snow White wakes to a kiss from Prince Charming.  Prince Charming plants an innocent kiss; we’re not talking about coitus here.  What if we update the story and make Snow White a young prince?  Now, explain to me, without sounding homophobic, how an innocent romantic kiss between a man and a woman is not sexualized and is appropriate for children, but an innocent romantic kiss between two men is abruptly sexualized and no longer appropriate for children.

If you maintain that we should just “let kids enjoy their innocence without sexualization”, do we then remove the portrayal of heterosexual couples from fairy tales?  Do I believe that some content is not appropriate for children?  Absolutely!  I simply fail to see how merely changing the gender of one of the characters without altering the plot magically turns it from ‘acceptable’ to ‘sexualized’.  On a very basic level, portraying heterosexual couples is sexualization.

Why no Straight Pride Month?

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  It already exists.  In fact, July through May are Straight Pride Month(s).  Much like we fail to label right-handed scissors as such does not mean that we designed them to work with left-handed people; we didn’t.  A non-Gay Pride Month is a DeFacto Straight Pride Month.  Culturally, we bombard everyone with the tacit indication that couple-hood necessarily implies heterosexual couple-hood.  Heterosexual people have grown so accustomed to all references leaning in their direction, that when it doesn’t, some feel slighted.

Allow me to frame it this way, straight people already have eleven months of the year where they are the DeFacto standard.  Are you really complaining about the one month when we discuss LGBTQ+ issues?  Really?!  How do you walk through doors with that ego?