I think slash (yaoi, m/m fan fiction) seriously fucked up my sexuality.

I started reading fanfic in my teens, when the internet was young. I was having a really hard time at school because I was suffering from serious mental illness due to abuse that no one knew about. This caused me to 'maladaptively daydream' a lot and dissociate from my body/present circumstances.

There were certain male characters I projected onto, because they shared some issues with me, in a metaphorical way, or acted out their anger at injustice. Never female characters, because being female didn't feel safe, and therefore wasn't an escape.

I stumbled across slash fanfic for these male characters, and was hooked. It was the 'foeyay' sort - in other words shipping them with their enemies. The relationship dynamics were crucial - they started off hating each other but were forced to work together against something more threatening, and so developed an appreciation for each other, discovered that there had been some preconceptions that were wrong, and ended up falling for each other. In other words the righting of injustices, misunderstood characters who were thought badly of finally being understood and offered love and acceptance, you know, emotional resolution. Magnetic stuff, to poor little outcast me at the time.

The male character I projected onto was usually shipped with a much higher status and more socially approved of male character. I guess I was vicariously seeking male approval, but didn't believe that I, as a girl, could ever achieve it, because I believed that no man would ever see or treat me as an equal. This was my "if I was male I could unlock this affection and respect between equals that I'm sure is available, but not to me" fantasy. Then - and this was the point, not any sort of attraction to men - I would be safe and protected and respected and admired, just as my favourite characters came to be.

I didn't want to read about sex involving a woman, because it felt like porn. Objectifying and degrading. It made me intensely uncomfortable. Fanfic involving M/F pairings often had romance novel type scenarios in them, and I was intensely put off by any whiff of male dominance towards a woman, or the female character actually being attracted to that. The presence of a female character in an erotic context instantly made me feel forced to identify with her perspective, and she would always be thinking and doing things that I never would, and found really alienating.

I got more and more into slash, and I kind of didn't develop a sexuality outside of that. I think there's a window of time where your sexuality develops, and I spent mine avoiding it by feeding myself virtual junk food specifically designed to create boundaries between my real, female body and my experience of sexuality.

In slash world, there is no misogyny, because women are periphery and barely exist. There is no shit and pain in anal sex. There are no STDs or pregnancy scares. Anatomy and sensation can work however you want.

It's written by women, for women. This was so important to me, as I thought I was exploring sexuality in a safe, risk free environment. I almost believed it was a feminist act - reclaiming the narrative of sexuality from men and objectifying them for a change. No actual men needed to be present, we could represent them as we wanted them to be, as we wished they were, have them treat the characters we identified with as we wished they would behave and feel towards us, and they weren't involved. Much better, safer and more satisfying than interacting with real men.

The discourse has more recently been about whether it's ethical for (presumably) straight women to appropriate gay men's experiences, but at the time we understood it to have nothing to do with real men or real attraction between men at all. It was all women using male vessels to express our desires that could not be met because we were women in this society.

Ultimately I think I wished to be loved by a man the way a woman stereotypically loves another woman, not the way a man stereotypically loves another man, but without the physicality of being female, because that's all wrapped up with embodiment, shame, and danger.

I did want to experience romance, passion, sensuality, acceptance, compassion, being cared for, etc... but I didn't want to be in my body, which had been violated and was vulnerable. I wanted to experience these things in a 'safe' body, and coming from another 'safe' body, not somebody else so horrifically vulnerable like myself.

That was the draw of slash, for me. The result was that it drew me deeper and deeper into dissociation from my body and mental illness. My sexuality never developed in a real world context and was stuck in the fictional, which is kind of like a fetish I guess. I have since stopped reading it, but it was really hard, like weaning off an addiction, and even years later theres just a hole where my sexuality should be.