Official Flag (left), Original Flag (right)
An orientation term where your lesbian identity is affected by the fact:
One is transmasculine, a trans man, transneutral, nonbinary, or just not a woman (includes multigender and genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux individuals), as one is either too dysphoric about being called a woman, experience a disconnection from traditional womanhood, and/or simply doesn’t identify as a woman or with womanhood.
They may describe their attraction as any of the following: MLW; MLNB; MLX; NBLW; NBLNB; NBLX, etc – but they don’t identify their labels as WLW; WLNB; or WLX due to reasons listed above.
With a multigender and/or genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux identity, one feels not straight when with a woman and/or has a fluctuating level of dysphoria when they sometimes view their attraction as sapphic/lesbian in nature, or as WLW; WLNB; WLX. To express that disconnection, the prefix shadow- is used.
This term also includes those whose orientation is fluid and/or flux, who may not 100% identify with the label of lesbian; due to barely ever experiencing attraction to women (or attraction period), having an attraction to women that feels lesbian but also not, having an attraction to women that’s fluid between being queer and queern’t, and/or experiencing attractions under a lesbian/sapphic lens.
In simpler terms, a shadowlesbian may be defined as the following:
Being multigender and/or genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux but never WLW, yet feeling like their attraction to women is gai/queer.
Being m-spec and not WLW, yet feeling a connection to the label.
Being too dysphoric about being called a woman/girl/being thought of as one, yet being either NBLW, MLW or XLW with a connection to the lesbian label.
Having a fluid/flux orientation where one’s not 100% a lesbian due to any reason, but retaining a connection to the lesbian label.
Simply feeling as if one’s lesbian, but also not.
This term was originally reposted on June 27th, 2022.
So years (July 19th 2020) ago I coined the Shadow- terms on my original mogai blog. Since then I’ve deleted that blog and one-half of the Shadow- terms do not have rebloggable posts out there, so I decided I’d repost the terms.
A while after (February 27th 2021) another tumblr user (@/thepokedexisgay) decided to make simpler alternate flags to these terms. I’ll be posting a link to their flags at the bottom of these posts.
I made the original flags based off of my original all inclusive lesbian/gay/vincian/etc. flags, and since I’ve remade those and posted them, I figured I’d remake the Shadow- flags as well, simplifying them and following the color schemes of my new flags. So yeah, some “official” flags for these terms.
That being said, I made the new Shadowlesbian flag based off of my Flowerbed Lesbian flag, so along with that if you ID as Shadowsapphic/ShadowQ4W or whoever else I mentioned could use the Flowerbed Lesbian flag, you can also use this flag if you feel your orientation is Shadow-.
(I’d prefer people use these flags as the official versions versus the originals, however if u personally like the other flags whether it’s Alois’s (thepokedexisgay) or the original ones, or feel like making your own based on an alternate lesbian/veldian/enbian/etc. flag, feel free to go on ahead.)
Yes, most of the definition in this post is ripped directly from the LGBTA wiki, with some changes to it due to my current knowledge of labels.
Here is the link to the Shadowlesbian flag made by @/thepokedexisgay, and here is the [link] to the Shadowlesbian page on the LGBTA wiki.
