I'm a 30-year-old who consumed massive amounts of slashfic from about age 12 to 25, and you perfectly described my experience and how my sexuality failed to develop (due to severe depression and suicidal self-loathing). It was NEVER about fantasizing about being a man or involved with a man, but indulging in romantic fantasies without the taint of misogyny or heterosexual power dynamics, or being forced to imagine myself in the situation I was reading about. I did not want to think about my body, or how I would react if a man touched me, or how I would feel if penetrated by a man. I still don't enjoy fiction about heterosexual romances because I can't tolerate the slightest hint of misogyny, male gaze, or a man coercing or hurting a woman, and because thinking about my body in a sexual context makes me feel sick.

Despite that, I could read femslash. I could easily separate myself from the story because there was no expectation that I would ever have sex with another woman, and so I didn't project that act onto my own body as I did when reading about heterosexual sex. A weird manifestation of comphet.

Fictional gay relationships feel like a relationship between equals, without all the cultural and biological baggage - they're just people who love each other, instead of a Man and a Woman. That is so very appealing to young women who are scared of everything related to heterosexuality. Personally, I sometimes wonder if I'm a repressed, sex-repulsed lesbian who spent years sublimating my weak desires through parasocial relationships with feminine gay men.