Hiya, I know! I'm a guy! Not supposed to be contributing here but can't really help myself... Particularly on this topic. I dont' know if it would be helpful or not but it would seem to me that on this issue in particular, the people most qualified to say how much slash fiction has to do with actual male homosexuality might be, well, you know, male homosexuals? I am not the best example - of a gay male slasher that is - I'm a pretty fine example of a male homosexual! But, I have often felt that, for example, there is something of a difference of tone between slash stories written by women and those by gay men... I don't have broad enough experience of reading slash to justify this as more than a hunch but I'm sure there's something in it. Also, not so much with the HP slash stories I wrote, but certainly when, under a pseudonym a long time ago, I wrote some Deep Space Nine slash, it felt very much to me as if the largely female 'power base' in the Star Trek fandom were very happy to keep male authors at something of a distance. Which leads me to my final rambling point which is that I'm sure that one of the things that most slash writers don't realise is how different this activity is from professional writing of either fiction or non-fiction. Slash writing seems to me to be a FUNDAMENTALLY social activity: stories are shared as they unfold, one story may have a number of different betas, stories are discussed openly and feedback/reviews are left (and often responded to by the author in turn). Whilst it might not be true to say that slash stories are written by a community they are certainly written IN community. This requires an ability to network and manage relationships which has always been presented as quite a steroypically female way of being....
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I know! I'm a guy! Not supposed to be contributing here but can't really help myself... Particularly on this topic. I dont' know if it would be helpful or not but it would seem to me that on this issue in particular, the people most qualified to say how much slash fiction has to do with actual male homosexuality might be, well, you know, male homosexuals?
I am not the best example - of a gay male slasher that is - I'm a pretty fine example of a male homosexual! But, I have often felt that, for example, there is something of a difference of tone between slash stories written by women and those by gay men... I don't have broad enough experience of reading slash to justify this as more than a hunch but I'm sure there's something in it.
Also, not so much with the HP slash stories I wrote, but certainly when, under a pseudonym a long time ago, I wrote some Deep Space Nine slash, it felt very much to me as if the largely female 'power base' in the Star Trek fandom were very happy to keep male authors at something of a distance.
Which leads me to my final rambling point which is that I'm sure that one of the things that most slash writers don't realise is how different this activity is from professional writing of either fiction or non-fiction. Slash writing seems to me to be a FUNDAMENTALLY social activity: stories are shared as they unfold, one story may have a number of different betas, stories are discussed openly and feedback/reviews are left (and often responded to by the author in turn). Whilst it might not be true to say that slash stories are written by a community they are certainly written IN community. This requires an ability to network and manage relationships which has always been presented as quite a steroypically female way of being....
just my two penneth...