Ugly fuckign pancake dogs can still #FightThePower

Canon Romulans have fairly strict gender roles. They are not identical to human gender roles, but they are there. They tend to be somewhat matriarchal, just like Vulcans, and do not usually restrict occupations by gender. Notable exception, in both Vulcan and Romulan society, being monasteries, which seem to be mostly gender-segregated. Marriages are arranged in childhood, implying compulsory heterosexuality, worse because this is an authoritarian ethnostate we're talking about and having children for the war machine is definitely part of that equation. Clothing and haircuts seem pretty gender-neutral, but from how people act on-screen it's clear that there's some subtle gendering going on with that. Deviating from gender norms is considered weird enough that "sister-boy" is an insult. And that is just on-screen stuff.

Beta canon expands this a bit more. We met a few Romulans in non-heterosexual marriages, but this doesn't really tell us anything about the actual sex of that partner. For all we know these marriages are the result of someone transitioning inside of their arranged marriage. Michael Chabon's posts have this wonderful bit about genderfluidity being normal in a society that idolizes "masks", with triune marriages being a common thing. We kind of see this dynamic play out with Laris/Zhaban/Picard in canon and Nero/Mandana/Ayel in the comics. The tabletop RPGs add more detail to marriages which make them about joining clans/houses together politically and rituals which are pretty similar to Roman wedding traditions, down to the flammeum, making them heavily gendered affairs. Much as I love the showrunner's vision, I feel like published works should take priority, even if I love a good OT3.

As for what those gender roles are, mythology gives us a decent idea. Both TTRPG Romulans and Michael Chabon's blog-musings Romulans have a Father God and Mother Goddess as the primal deities. The father-god is Ket-Cheleb, god of war and hatred, or Yon, god of fire and an obvious metaphor for pon farr. The mother-goddess is D'era, goddess of the open sky (a metaphor for manifest destiny) and honor, or Shek-Tukh, goddesss of iron and (it is implied by Vulcan's red soil) earth. So we can kind of extract from these a stereotype where men are hot-blooded, wrathful, warlike, and passionate, and women are ambitious, honorable, rigid, and fertile. We also get a bit of gendering in Vulcan's Soul where a Romulan stereotype about women is their ability to be frank and unembarrassed by things men would be touchy about.

So you can kind of see where the Qowat Milat "no men" thing comes from looking at those gender stereotypes right? A sister of the Qowat Milat needs to be cool-headed, willful, honorable, and resistant to revenge fantasies or impulsive violence. They wear their hair long, but this has more to do with their role as Imperial kindred (MC's blog posts, Vulcan's Heart) than gender, and in the 32nd Century, way after the Imperial kindred are irrelevant, we see short-haired Qowat Milat. In the Rihannsu series, AFAB Rommies also get more throwback genes for telepathy than AMAB Rommies, which explains J'vinni's telepathy, but also gives another possible (transphobic) reason for the "no men" rule.

So, enter Elnor: Trained and raised by the Qowat Milat, and wearing the blue robes of a Qowat Milat novice (The Last Best Hope), his role models growing up were all women. His peers and elders both find him gender-nonconforming enough to make fun of him for it. Without a family to arrange a marriage for him, he is also barred from a practice in which he could otherwise affirm his masculinity. He continues to wear his hair long when given other options, even after leaving the Qowat Milat, so it does not seem to be a religious choice for him, at least not primarily. And if we take Michael Chabon's blog and the implications from the books at face-value, it's not like gender transition is not an option, so the fact that Zani insists "as a man, he never can be [Qowat Milat]" suggests he self-identifies as male at least somewhat. He's hot-headed and passionate, but also honorable and exceptionally rigid.

Anyway, I feel like Elnor is nonbinary or genderfluid, but lacks the social context, vocabulary, and cultural specificity to express or claim that. There really aren't many role-models for being nonbinary in Romulan society. There's Zul, the deity of magma and creation, but I'm pretty sure Zul is not... personified... and it's also not like Elnor believes in gods. He's pretty specific about Romulan myths being "just stories." As for sexuality, just look at this and tell me this is not his girlfriend:

So yeah, Elnor likes women, or at least femme-presenting people. Doesn't mean he exclusively does, but he at least seems to. I'm not sure what "experimenting with his sexuality" is supposed to mean in that discarded plot idea, but the only people roughly his age in S2's cast list are this girl, Soji, and Kore, which suggests I'm onto something I think.

Whether or not Romulans experience something akin to pon farr is a whole other set of headcanons, but like... they have treatments for it, specifically in Sarek, and in Vulcan's Heart Ruanek tells Spock it's an open secret in Romulan society that Vulcans go through it, and you don't tend to make medicine for something you don't experience, you know? But I suspect it plays out more mildly. In Spock's World we see that pon farr was survivable on ancient Vulcan, and used as a kind of endurance test to see if someone was ready for marriage. In Vulcan's Soul genetic engineering is used to speed up the birth-cycle of the dwindling population, causing genetic drift between the species. As for whether Elnor's had to deal with it, average age for a Vulcan to experience their first is between 16-25 in the TTRPGs so... maybe?

I'm putting way more thought into this than the writers intended. And you all came here for headcanons, not an investigative deep-dive. But all of the above is necessary setup for my actual headcanons.

Elnor, I feel like, doesn't really carry himself like someone with a lot of physical dysphoria. Basically the opposite. He is exceedingly confident in his own skin. But I think the other aspects of gender do cause some.

If transition is an option, but he's rejected it, that suggests he identifies as male so neurologically he knows who he is. I imagine this makes being taunted for being gender-nonconforming pretty infuriating and frustrating. So we've got some dysphoria there.

Gender in Romulan society is tied up with marriage, family, and house politics, all of which are things he has no access to. In the TTRPGs, Romulans are not even full adults until they go through these rites of passage. So culturally, he is genderless, or outside gender performance, which just makes him feel angry and lost.

He was raised entirely around women, his role models are women, when given the chance to select friends he seems to gravitate towards women. So socially Elnor seems to fall more into femme categories. Since he's also attracted to women, this confuses him.

I headcanon the Qowat Milat function as avatars of the Mother Goddess, and he steps into this role in a ritual manner as a qalankhai, so he has some spiritual genderfluidity going on. Taking my headcanons a step further, I'd argue that any time the Qowat Milat voice their emotions in Absolute Candor, they are 'channeling' one of the Ka-Ta-Pak, so again, built-in spiritual genderfluidity.

If Romulans do experience pon farr, this adds a whole layer of misery. Given the frankness of the Qowat Milat, and stuff from Vulcan's Soul, I don't think they'd mince words about this. Imagine growing up treated as potentially dangerous for your sex, then place it in a matrix of gender confusion and dysphoria. I could easily see Elnor being banished from the House of the Qowat Milat for a week of fever and discomfort at the appropriate age.

Finally, role models! Small Elnor has only one male role model: Picard. The very same Picard who abandoned Vashti and the Romulans and Elnor. And we all know how much he resented that. So, identifying as male, with his only male role model disappointing him, definitely did some damage to his sense of identity.