Taxacom: Removals of offending scientific names

[Neal Evenhuis]

This thread about eponyms, toponyms and other -nyms that offend because of their perceived (and real) negative connotations of persons and places got me a bit riled up. There are those backing the Mee Toos; Black Lives Matter; and decolonization efforts (I have no qualms with them). Yet, I do have many reservations about erasing names from history just to make certain groups feel better -- but what got me really ticked off is that no one has yet spoken up for another oppressed minority – us left-handers. We are apparently the silent oppressed. We are only 10% of the world’s population and as such are forced to live in a right-handed world. There are loads of derogatory words for left-handedness such as corrie-fisted, southpaw, wrong-hander, maladroit, dubious, awkward, clumsy, and insincere. We have lived being looked down-upon by right-handers for millennia. Learning to write from left to right forced many of us to adopt an awkward hand position so as to keep from smudging the hand while writing (creating some mental syndromes resulting in a few PhD studies in psychology). Most tools are right-handed. Rifles eject bullets into our faces (they are made for right-handers too). And some cultures even disallow one to eat with the left hand because ... well ...  you’ll have to look that one up.

So, if we are going to ban offending names so we can sleep better at night, I propose we left-handers join the other oppressed groups and demand the banning of all scientific names that refer to left-handedness (e.g., like sinister, sinistral) and also while we’re at it -- ban “dexterous” since it implies right is better than left. And of course, “Rive Gauche” will have to be renamed too.

😉

Neal