Sensitive subject, I'll tell you later. In Valinor Elves don't.

Okay.

"This is weird."

"Which part?"

"Kind of all of it? Like, society of nondynamics, that's weird in a cool science-fictiony way that I would personally find really convenient if you also had plumbing and wifi. Society of monosexual monogamous nondynamics with magic marriage who self-destruct if raped and it's getting to be weirder than that. By a lot."

"Monosexual?"

"Humans sort attraction by role not gender. Most humans would not preferentially select partners of the opposite sex unless having biological children within that partnership was important to them - which it is to lots of people, so there's substantial skew, but not an overwhelming one."

"...huh."

"There is a gender correlation with role but it's not that much of one."

"Which direction?"

"Women're more likely to be subs. Minimally fucked-up statistics suggest splits of sixty-thirty-ten, ten being switches, in each sex."

"Huh, I'd have guessed the other way around."

"Yeah, the way you gender things would suggest that but it's not how humans seem to work," shrugs Isabella. "Statistically."

"Could try collecting statistics on Elves but you'd have to explain the idea first and I think most people'd say it just doesn't fit -"

"Yeah."

"Is it considered occupationally relevant, are there conventions for it outside intimate relationships -"

"Sometimes - there are skews in lots of occupations but many of those can be attributed to what fields people go into, there's some but not as much evidence of hiring bias. What do you mean by conventions?"

"I don't know - differences in forms of address, in presentation - you said it was like gender -"

"Yeah, we dress differently, in this culture doms have short hair and subs have it long, if somebody who doesn't know me needs my attention they'll say 'ma'am' but if I were a sub they'd say 'miss', there's a lot of etiquette rules most people don't pay attention to anymore about who holds doors and wears hats and stands up in various contexts, in nice restaurants and public transit and stuff there's places for subs to kneel next to their doms, committed relationships - starting prior to even seriously thinking about marriage - subs start wearing collars with their doms' names on them, in certain medical contexts they'll ask if you prefer to be seen by a same-role doctor..."

"That is very interesting."

"And even though ten percent of people are switches they're persistently institutionally bewildering. Our mom's a switch; at work - she teaches kindergarten, little kids - she lets people think she's a sub because her husband - not our dad, our parents are divorced - is a dom and she wears a collar, but she's the kind of person who'll make a fuss about it if somebody calls her 'miss' in the grocery store. The role-neutral is 'Ms.'"

"And people are going to think we are -"

"Illegible, mostly. They might guess sub because of the hair - more stupidly they might guess dom because you're tall, which is not a real thing except insofar as in humans men are taller than women so it sort of leaked - Macalaurië's presenting as a switch so she can draw from a broader palette of aesthetic notes, she's very good at it, people might assume Elves are all switches or something."

"Are all sex acts coded as associated with a specific power dynamic or -"

"Moooom."