Long time coming: why I like slash

I've been a slasher for about seven years now. (Dear god, where does the time go?) By "slasher," I mean: I read slash. I write slash. I enjoy watching for slashy subtext in movies and TV shows. I enjoy talking about it with other people.

I do sometimes read and enjoy het (especially Spike/Buffy) and gen, but my main fannish interests have always centred around slash.

I've never been entirely sure why.

When I first discovered slash online, I was both thrilled and surprised. When I realized how huge it was, and when I realized that the majority of slash authors were actually straight women, I was even more surprised. I'd reached the age of twenty without really being exposed to the idea that women could have/create/share sexual fantasies; porn had always seemed to be the exclusive domain of men.

Right away, I started wondering what exactly they/we/I found so appealing about the concept. I've read a lot of people's essays over the years in which they try to explain why they like slash—or, equally interesting, why they don't. Most recently, tonight I read speakr2customrs's mini-essay "Gay Now?" in which he talks about why slash doesn't make sense to him, although (to my utter glee) he singles out my Fragments series as an exception.

Tonight, I feel like it's finally time to try to explain to myself why I like slash. This is going to be an entirely personal response, with absolutely no attempts to generalize into ideas like "why slash is so popular."

( I think it all started when... )