Shadowfloric (or shadowturian and originally coined as shadowvincian) is an orientation affected by the fact you’re transfeminine, a trans woman, transneutral, nonbinary, or just not a man (includes multigender and genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux folxs), as you either are dysphoric about being called a man, and/or experience a disconnection from traditional manhood. You may describe your attraction as any of the following: WLM; WLNB; WLX; NBLM; NBLNB; NBLX, etc – but you don’t identify your labels as MLM; MLNB; or MLX due to reasons listed above. With a multigender and/or genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux identity, one feels not straight when with a man and/or has a fluctuating level of dysphoria where they may sometimes view your attraction as vincian/achillean/floric/turian in nature, or as MLM; MLNB; MLX. To express that disconnection, the prefix shadow- is used. It can also be called shadowvincian or shadowachillean.
In simpler terms, a shadowlesbian may be defined as the following:
- Being multigender/genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux but never MLM, yet feeling like your attraction to men is gai.
- Being m-spec and not MLM, yet feeling a connection to the label.
- Being too dysphoric about being called a man/boy/being thought of as one, yet being either NBLM, WLM or XLM with a connection to the floric/turian label.[1]
History
The shadow- orientations (shadowlesbian, shadowgay, and shadowfloric) were first coined by Tumblr user ashix0trender0juice on 19 July 2020, with shadowenbian and shadowstraight being coined later. The flags were made around the same time.[2]
A redesign of the shadow- flags, including a shadowvincian/shadowachillean flag, were created by Tumblr user thepokedexisgay. The shadowfloric/shadowturian redesign was posted on 27 February 2021[3], and the shadowvincian/shadowachillean flag was posted 28 February 2021.[4]
Note: The creator of the redesigned flags prefers to use "floric" or "turian" as their gay man label instead of "vincian", preferring vincian as the general MLM term over achillean.