I'm still not convinced that slash is as subversively feminist as the people who talk about power imbalances between male and female and how slash eliminates that claim - if the only relationship that can be portrayed as power-neutral is male/male or female/female then surely something's wrong with our portrayals.
Ugh. Yeah, totally. Not only are you right that something is wrong if the only power neutral relationships they can imagine are male/male or female/female, but they usually aren't even power neutral in those situations either. Leaving aside all of the dozens of other sources of social power imbalances, more often than not authors just end up recreating the stereotypes associated with male/female relationships anyway.
Re: Part 2 of 2
Ugh. Yeah, totally. Not only are you right that something is wrong if the only power neutral relationships they can imagine are male/male or female/female, but they usually aren't even power neutral in those situations either. Leaving aside all of the dozens of other sources of social power imbalances, more often than not authors just end up recreating the stereotypes associated with male/female relationships anyway.