The Social Negotiations of “Girls Like Us”: What Text-Messaging Dyadic Interactions Reveal About the Lives of Queer, Lesbian, and Bisexual Girls Living in the United States

Abstract

While there is emerging literature addressing the gendered nature of digital communication between youth, research about the everyday communications, friendships, and social relations of LGBTQ+ youth remains sparse. This study explores how 14 to 18-year-old, cisgender lesbian, bisexual, and queer girls living in the United States come to understand themselves and others in dyadic text messaging conversations of girls who were previously unknown to each other. Using grounded theory, this secondary data analysis identified the pervasiveness of heteronormative frameworks in participants’ communications with each other. Findings indicate that both digitally-mediated expressions of selfhood and queer identity are dynamic processes significantly shaped by normative discourses and participants’ desire to connect. Drawing on and contributing to girlhood and youth studies, this research provides insight into how queer cisgender girls construct literacies of self, sexuality, and gender, and establish connection, and how they resist heteronormativity to validate their own and each other’s sexual identities.