I think a lot of people use fanfic as a safe place to explore/exorcise etc aspects of themselves that aren't sufficiently dealt with in "real life". I think it's great people can find that.

I'm also one of those people that think that the characters and their interactions in slash usually aren't and kind of aren't supposed to be truly representative of gay men or women. I'm aware that there are people out there in fandom who disagree with that point of view.

See the way I see it this is true for some writers, and some readers (not necessarily of the same stories :)) but not for all. Slash (and femslash, and all fanfic) is many different things to different people. Which can make it hard to figure it if a given story is aiming to give what you want to get, but that's what good recs and summaries are for :)

And huzzah for the passing of the Bechdel test!