It always struck me as rather strange--- most of us learned to
strum the guitar at first, which situation means that the
left hand is doing the complicated bits and the right hand
is used rather like a club.

As a former rag-time piano-player, I have to say that my left
hand was quite capable of rather fancy things, and I'm decidely
'righty.'

So to me it begs the question "why not just have lefties play
the chords with their dextrous hand and pluck the stings with
the sinister?"

I guess I'm not convinced that on stringed instruments either
hand has a more complicated task, per se, just different.

Learning 'lefty' means that borrowing a guitar at a session
or at a friend's house is mostly 'out.' More than 90% of the
nice vintage instruments are 'out.'

I'm not left-handed, but I truly believe that I could learn to
play a left-handed guitar in fairly short order. By inference,
I think a left-hander ought to be able to learn to play a so-called
'right handed' guitar. Because it really isn't. It's just a guitar.