Shane wrote:
it has also been said that slash denies gay identity (i.e. the stories along the lines of "Blake's not gay, he just has sex with
Avon")
That depends very much on who's writing/reading the slash. As far as I'm concerned, if two male characters are having sex with one another, they're both bisexual to some degree (since they almost all have canonical het relationships - Blake's a real exception here but then I'm not into B/A)
and doesn't give much of a voice to lesbians
No, that gets left to the f/f ers, they are out there.
or address the real political issues which I'm sure gay people face even
in a future society. I know, >it's all a fantasy, but IMO it raises some disturbing questions about RL politics.
Again, that depends on the writer. True, you won't find much of it in B7 because we have no idea what the Federation attitudes to homosexuality were (or the Auron attitudes or anybody else's), but there is some good slash out there from modern-day set series that does cover the problems of attitudes and homophobia. It's vastly out-numbered by the PWPs and the romances, I'll grant you, but some of the better writers tackle it.
Louise