ABSTRACT
Indeed, previous research has highlighted the advantages of the internet for sexual minorities and for their coming-out experiences in general (for an overview see Szulc & Dhoest, 2013). This also applies to the few studies on queer-lesbian girls and women and the internet (Driver, 2007), as well as on lesbian girls and women, coming out and the internet (Munt, Bassett & O’Riordan, 2002). Susan Driver (2007) sees online communities as realms where ‘queer youth are active makers and facilitators of provisional and fluid spaces of dialogue, sharing experiences from their life worlds and creating imagined social worlds’. She states that ‘it is online that young people find ways to safely and creatively explore their queer difference as lesbian and bisexual girls, transyouth, genderqueers, and birls’ (p. 192). Similarly, in their analysis of a self-described lesbian online forum, Munt, Bassett and O’Riordan (2002) argue that ‘the circulation of practical information and advice in the site prior to disclosure allows participants to prepare, discuss, and shape their material or lived identities in advance of off-line affiliation’ (p. 136). But the forum is not only preparatory as participants return to the site and ‘renegotiate their identity’ (ibid.). The dialogues that emerge between newly engaged participants and participants who describe themselves as ‘older lesbians’ function as a transfer of knowledge and ‘(sub)cultural capital’ (p. 130).
