Sex: How it's determined & how this system came to be

As you will have likely read in the intro, sex within the Aethini race is an interesting and unique biological and societal system.

All Aethini people are born male but contain within them a dormant female reproductive system. This dormant system is awakened through a special form of sex that is only conducted by the Aethini. When an Aethini male who has reached sexual maturity at approximately eighteen years of age has sex, the sex of his partner plays an important role in the result of the encounter. If his partner is female, then the sex is about as usual as you might expect. However, if two males were to have sex a whole world of biological complexity is opened up.

Two Aethini males may have sex for one of two reasons: Love/Attraction, or for Domination. When two males have sex, a dominant and submissive are always established through a series of chemical and hormonal signals that their bodies absorb from eachother. This effects the state of the penis of each participant: The dominant male will remain erect and stiff, while the submissive male's penis will soften and relax. In this way, when the two members are pressed against eachother, the softer and relaxed penis will give way and allow the dominant male to penetrate it. You can envision this as if one penis 'swallows' the other, leaving you with two males where one's penis has slipped inside the other. This happens cleanly and without issue where the pair is a couple with a consenting submissive male. However, in the case of a battle for domination, this process is much less clearly defined and can take some time to be fully established.

Once this dynamic is established, the submissive male may find that some of the strength within their body is lessened, leaving the dominant male in a position of greater control. It is now up to the dominant male to control the extent of their intercourse. In the case of two consenting males having sex, the two will simply enjoy themselves and in most cases the dominant male will remove himself from his partner's member before he climaxes. The other side of this is in the situation of combative victory. Now, this is where things get interesting.

Young males on Aeterna engage in a traditional form of combat called 'Khanghaji' (When roughly translated to an english alphabet) in which two males will grapple for dominance over the other. This is the traditional method by which the biological mechanisms within the Aethini are utlised to determine sex. When two males battle in this way, the established dominant male may choose to enact his right by victory and attempt to convert the loser to a female. He does this by pushing his penis as deep inside the loser as possible, causing the penis of the submissive male to invert inside the body. Should the victor be of sufficient size, he will be able to penetrate all the way to the dormant womb of the loser. In doing so, he may now ejaculate deep inside the loser and begin the process for the defeated male to transform into a female. Should he succeed, the victorious male will grow in size and strength as his own female organs are dissolved and reabsorbed into the body.