There are only two genders: male and female.
Men are strong, stoic, brave. They protect the weak and build great things.
Women are sensitive, kind, and insightful. They nurture and teach, and are more skilled in the arts of magic.
You will see this dichotomy reinforced throughout all elven societies. Of course, not every elven enclave is the same, but the certainly follow certain trends. Let's consider the elves of the Yavanelya forest.
(Digression: Note that we are mostly talking about high elves (a.k.a. low elves) and wood elves. Half-elves aren't really true elves since most of them were born human, and while true elves often do without the cumbersome rigors of biology in the first place. Here's a primer. Here's more.)
Gender Among the Yavanelya Elves
Elven women are not permitted to be soldiers. Elven men are not permitted to instruct children. There are many professions that are limited to one gender in this way. It is not elven laws that regulate this, but social pressures. There is a right and a wrong way to do things, as everyone knows.
While there are not many children among the elves these days, most are in agreement that girls are easier to raise than boys, and so most elven mothers choose to have daughters exclusively. The ratio of daughters to sons is something like twenty to one.
Among the Yavanelya, daughters are born during peacetime, while sons are born during wartime. Because the society sees itself as eternally peaceful, they only ever birth daughters.
Everyone knows that boys will get into more trouble that girls since they are more rambunctious, and yet most parents would prefer that their children experience both genders before they leave home. While it varies between families, most elven children transition into boys for at least a few years in later adolescence.
This time is seen as essential to the Yavanelya elves. It takes time to learn how to perform the norms of each gender, and parents usually see themselves as the best ones to guide this process. An adult male elf must be easily, effortlessly masculine. The same can be said for elven women.
Sometimes parents transition along with their eldest children, in order to guide them during this confusing time. A young elf might have two mothers when she is female, and two fathers when he is male. (However, this is seen as over-indulgent by most Yavanelya elves. It is more common among the smaller elven clans of the frozen south.)
Since boys are naturally rambunctious and girls are naturally docile, it is usually a sign of trust when a young elf is allowed to transition to male. Younger elves who are seen as rebellious are usually not allowed to transition until they are seen as mature enough.
Adult elves vary in their own preferences. Some prefer one gender over one another, but the majority of elves will prefer to spend time as both genders throughout the year. Most elves have extensive wardrobes, with different outfits for each gender and each of the six seasons.
The most popular time to be a woman is in the warmest and the coldest seasons (estival and hibernal), since it allows elves to show the most skin and also affords the largest, most complex outfits. (Women are the beautiful gender--men are more utilitarian, as everyone knows.)
And of course, changing your gender too frequently is seen as dramatic and self-absorbed. A serious adult elf always has a good reason for changing their gender. (Although sometimes that reason is just that there is a party that you need to go to, and your date is refusing to change their gender, so you did the noble thing and changed yours.)
Keeping Up Appearances
Elves have always had a tremendous amount of control over their appearances, with both simple illusory techniques as well as biologic ones. Since elves can change their appearances as easily as changing clothes, this has led to increasingly refined beauty fashions, with everyone wishing to adhere to specific beauty norms while also being different enough from everyone else, and also not seeming like they're trying too hard. (Elves spend a great deal of time in these pursuits.)
Biologic sex is a bit more complicated than changing the bones in your face, or regrowing a set of teeth after they become a bit yellow, but it is still a short process. About 48 hours, for young elves. (Older elves transition slower.)
Similar to gender, elves also choose their facial features in order to evoke certain personalities. A broad chin to seem course and blunt. A slender waist to seem erudite. Large eyes to seem sensitive.
In a way, it's no different from a human putting on a wedding dress, business suit, or little black dress. Everything is effectively costume. Changing your gender is somewhere between changing your clothes and changing your name. Certainly not something you do flippantly, but also something that clearly has its place.
Which makes it sometimes difficult for elves to interact with humans. Of course elves know that humans can't control their appearances, but it still feels grating to see them behaving so out-of-sorts. A bit like a race of creatures that can't help but wear business suits to the beach, or wedding dresses to the nightclub. Sure, you can do those things, but how are humans not uncomfortable all of the time?
To an elf, the life of a human seems to be both unbearable uncomfortable and boorish. A human's life is uncomfortable because their genders are fixed, even when circumstances demand one gender over another. (How can anyone go to a funeral while male? Mourning is essential at a funeral, for both the individual and the family, and yet men cannot cry. It is both uncomfortable and unhealthy.) And humans are boorish because they break natural laws constantly. Human males do in fact cry at funerals. It's embarassing. Men don't cry.
An Elven Myth
It was in the early days, before the other races were created, that the Authority first created the elves.
Elves loved beauty and hated war, and so they all remained as women, and there were no men, and no babies were born to them.
And so the Authority, in His wisdom, created menstruation, in order to vex the elves and drive some of them to embrace maleness for some of the time, so that the beautiful and wonderful elves would not die out.
Eventually, the elves discovered remedies and palliatives, and menstruation ceased to vex them.
It was then that the Authority created the lesser races, in order to bring war to the elves.
While the lesser races could never truly challenge the authority of the Firstborn, it was sufficient to drive many of the elves into manhood, for the bravery and wit of men was required to revitalize their glades, which had grown too placid in those halcyon days.
Thus were the elves renewed, forever and ever.
The Imanteur
Once there was a type of dress called the imaunteur which became enormously, overwhelmingly popular. Everyone wanted to be seen in one. Since men cannot wear dresses, nearly the entire population of the Yavanelya became female for the entire serotinal season.
This was entirely untenable, of course. Many of the masculine jobs were neglected entirely. (During the season of the imanteur it was nigh impossible to find a decent jeweler!)
The patriarchs immediately ordered their finest fashionistas to design newer, compelling male fashions in order to restore the harmony. They were quickly successful, of course, since it is not hard to convince elves to adopt a new fashion.
Still, many elves of the Yavanelya still have an imanteur dress in their closet, and think back fondly to the serotinal season when the entire nation was female. What a fun time that was!
(The patriarchs would never pass laws to control the population. Such barbarism would restrict their freedom, and might make some elves feel uncomfortable.)
Relationships
Elves are monogamous, and their marriages are eternal. Divorces are unpleasant things, and so they are not performed. You'll only ever see divorces occurring in less developed societies, among the less-developed races. (However affairs are common. Among the Yavanelya, they could even been seen as normative. The marital love is the one that is performed and described, but the adulterous love is the one that is felt but never spoken of. But of course affairs have their own set of rigid social conventions that exist outside the scope of this blog post.)
Elves court and eventually marry.
At formal events, it is absolutely expected that they present as a man and woman. They may switch from time to time, but same-sex couples are seen as disgusting.
In private, though, all sorts of things are done, and elves are nothing if not respectful of each other's privacy. In civilized society, direct questions are brutish and rude. Direct questions about the inner workings of another elf's marital relationship are obscene.
And of course, there are perfectly good reasons why two elves might need to both be male at the same time. Perhaps they have health issues when they are a certain gender. Or perhaps they have some other significant obligation that requires them to be one gender over another.
Pregnancy
Very few elves want to be pregnant. And there is very little social pressure to have children. Quite the opposite, actually.
One big social reason to avoid pregnancy is because it locks you into a female body for a long period of time. A second reason is that birth and nursing are social "fixatives". While an elf might change genders many times in their life, elves who gave birth and nursed an infant are seen as slightly feminized forever.
No matter if they spend the rest of their lives as a man, they'll forever been seen as someone's mother. And while elven society holds women in lower regard than men, it's even worse to be seen as static and unchanging. Not only is it unfashionable, but beastly. It's seen as something more animalistic--not "dirty" but definitely something that debases you.
Legal Status
The Yavanelya are led by patriarchs. Even if some of them happen to be women this month, it is clear that they are patriarchs, since they were crowned as kings. Women obviously cannot rule, since they are too irrational.
If one of the patriarches happens to make a pronouncement while they are female, it is not legally binding. However, everyone knows that they are one long weekend away from reverting to their masculine posture (this the legal term), and so the decrees from female patriarchs tend to be effected de facto, even though they are not obligatory de jure.
While elven women have fewer rights than elven men, this is hardly ever relevant given the ease of transitioning.
However, there one place where the difference is not negligible. Male witnesses are legally held to be more trustworthy than female witnesses. If an elf witnessed an event while female, their testimony is not held to the same standard as if they had been a man at the time of the witnessing, even if they later transition to male prior to the trial (in order to improve the logic of their mind).
Most elves have one gender that they prefer over another. (Although it is a rare elf who lives their whole life as one gender.) Upon death, they are assigned their preferred gender, even if they die while they are the non-preferred gender. This is what goes on their tombstone (or ashakka) and how they are spoken of for all future discussions.
Other Races
To other races, elves sometimes seem a little androgynous to begin with. (Although most elves would be very offended if you told them they looked androgynous.) Elven men and women both have similar heights and builds. They both love beautiful things.
Elven culture seems highly gendered. At a social gathering, elven women will always pour the drinks, while elven men will never touch a teapot.
Some elves will make allowances for the lesser races. If a human woman raises a bow, it is not such an abominable thing. Humans are frail and inflexible in their natures. As the "elder brother" to humanity, elves have a duty to gently steward the younger race in matters of propriety, dignity, and morality. It is difficult for humans to behave morally--they are stubborn and foolish, and they have so little time to mature out of their foolishness. They are eternally children, putting their shoes on the wrong feet and laughing at it.
Other elves are more abrasive in their paternalism towards the lesser races. If humans wish to behave like animals (e.g. women wearing pants, men crying) then they will be treated like animals.
Humans aren't always aware that elves can change genders over the weekend (especially since many humans think of half-elves when they think of "elves"). Reactions to their discovery to the contrary are mixed.
However, humans are often surprised by how different elves seem between their different genders. Their elven friend Alyste might be pleasant and supportive when they are female on Friday, and yet be mocking and sharp when they are male on Monday.
Although this shouldn't be too surprising. Elves see their natures are flexible and able to rise to any need. Elves will change their personalities along with their clothing. (Humans do much of the same thing, but tends to be smaller and more subconscious.)
How to Use This in Your Game
This blog post isn't really game content. This blog post is more like speculative fiction minus the fiction. It came from the idea of "Can you have a misogynist patriarchy where everyone is trans?"
If you think that your table would have fun with the ideas presented here (or in the Dwarven gender post) then you should incorporate into your game as much or as little as would be best. And of course, this topic cuts very close to real world politics, so deploy this secret elven lore carefully.
But, hopefully this post is also encouragement for other people who will have other good ideas. There's tons of creative people out there writing creative game worlds with creative societies, but it's pretty rare to see gender be a part the creative world building process. I think we usually just take it for granted.
