I Am The (S)hero of The Story
Dissenter said this:

Slash: Workin' for The Man Every Night And Day

I said:

I don't buy your equation of homosocial and homosexual behavior, nor the conclusions that you draw from it. The Patriarchy regularly gags on homosexual identity - the repeated (institutionalized!) criminalization of gay behavior all over the world makes that clear. Even if you base your argument on a subconscious or subsocial link between the two, you'd have to grant the that by willfully ignoring vast swaths of negative cultural presentation on the subject, slash writers have seized (and colonized) ground that the Patriarchy labeled taboo.

In what way is that not feminist, and, indeed, radical?

Is it because slash is - as you say - so phallocentric? But why is the appropriation of male sexual identity in the service of female pleasure not - at least - an upending of the Patriarchy's dominance over the erotic sphere?

The source material itself is often witlessly misogynist - granted. And maybe there is a thread to be pursued here re: why and how slash/fanfic writers identify the source texts that interest them...

But I believe that by co-opting the male leads in a pop-culture narrative, and portraying them as sexually attracted to and pleasured by the same attributes and behaviors that attract and pleasure the (as you say) heterosexual female author - slash as a genre is tremendously (and subversively) feminist.

Also - as I may have mentioned here before: I'm pretty confident about my feminist street cred, I am consciously and enthusiastically engaging in a network of cyber-sexual relationships with other women, and yes, I also like dick.

ETA: AWESOME. She just deleted my comment.