Safehand

The safehand what the Alethi call a female's left hand that is obscene when left uncovered, according to their Vorin cultural tradition. Upper class women adhere to the safehand tradition most faithfully, wearing a sleeve that covers their left hand loosely. Lower class women wear a glove so they can use both hands freely, and prostitutes provocatively wear no glove on their safehand. The sleeve has a safepouch sewn on the inside for women to store personal objects. It is considered extremely unacceptable to open another woman's safepouch. In an interview, Sanderson stated that the tradition derives in part from "a famous book written by an artist who claimed that true feminine pursuits and arts were those that could be performed with one hand, while masculine arts were those performed with two hands, in a way associating delicacy with women and brute force with men."