Give that young woman a decade or two and she'll be measuring her beard against yours and mine. If she dares. :-) Ha ha ha! Middle age. Ain't it wonderful.

"I get the impression though, that there are a set of tropes that are considered indicative of slash-- emotional openness, maybe, or a will-he-won't-he plot device that rarely show up in conventional M/M erotica? What do you think?" I think this is like "what is porn and what is erotica" issue - people tend to label stories by genre according to which publication they find them in. I've posted notices at slash forums of m/m works published in my e-zine - works written by leathermen - and they've been labelled by slash readers as original slash because I announced these stories in the slash world. I certainly have slashy tastes, but I also have gayfic tastes, so I think that slashers are prepared to accept as original slash anything that vaguely resembles slash, provided that it appears in the slash world. You can see this quite clearly from the fact that a lot of so-called original slash is actually yaoi-ish in nature. On the more general issue of whether slash differs from gayfic, there've been tons of debates about that in the slash world. My answer would be, "Yes, but there's a big area of overlap, and there are lots of exceptions." I've seen Nifty-type stories posted in the slash world, and I've seen slashy stories written by gay men who have had no contact with the slash world. In general, though, there tends to be a greater emphasis on emotions and romance in the slash world than in gay erotica. That's why gay guys who like that sort of thing often end up in the slash world. :) "I told her that her 'mannish women' comment hurt my feelings since I had no choice, what with the beard and all... (my av is photoshopped)" :)