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Camilla Bacon-Smith understood slash fiction as a way of helping women deal with traumatic love relationships by utilizing a non-threatening, non-aggressive form of male sexuality as means of comfort. The notion that fans write slash as means of therapy and to write about their own hurt and their need for tenderness seems quite antiquated today, and has been openly opposed by fans and acafans alike for decades.
In the mid-80s some scholars, most notably Henry Jenkins, introduced the idea of slash fiction as a possible reaction to heterosexual traditional mainstream pornography; that it was a form of fiction liberating itself from gender hierarchy and genderized images. This form of transgression is also often cited as one of the joys of writing slash fiction.
The transgression of gender in slash fanfiction has also raised question as to whether or not slashed characters should be considered gay, or rather have their own sexuality fluent between male and female characteristics.
