The Internet’s Dual Role: Queer Connection and Trauma in Girls Can Kiss Now

Defining the Thematic Claim

In Girls Can Kiss Now, Jill Gutowitz argues that the internet simultaneously provides queer people with a lifeline of connection and visibility while exposing them to unique forms of trauma, surveillance, and shame. This paradox runs throughout her memoir, from her first clicks on AOL in 1997 to an FBI interrogation over a Game of Thrones meme in 2018. The internet is not simply a tool or a backdrop; it is a character that shapes Gutowitz’s identity, relationships, and understanding of queerness. Through her personal history, she reveals how online spaces can nurture self-discovery and community, yet also amplify homophobia, create new vulnerabilities, and blur the line between seeking connection and courting danger.

Part One: Early Internet Exploration – Shame and Discovery

Gutowitz’s first encounter with the internet, chronicled in Chapter 1, is both innocent and fraught. At age six, she is mesmerized by the blue-green glow of a family computer. With the help of her cousin Lee, she learns to search for sexual terms and, crucially, to “clear history” afterward. This ritual of secret exploration establishes a lifelong pattern: the internet becomes a space for forbidden knowledge and self-discovery, but also for intense shame. Gutowitz describes how she spent hours in her father’s office watching pornography, then “click clear history, and slither back into the night to feel disgusting.” The shame is compounded by the fear of being caught by her parents, a fear that materializes when they discover her activity and confront her.

Yet even as she feels disgust, Gutowitz is drawn to the internet’s promise of connection. She moves from static porn sites to AOL chat rooms, where she learns to “cyber” with strangers, often pretending to be older or male. These early interactions are her first taste of queer community—anonymous, risky, but also thrilling. She finds people willing to engage with her desires without judgment. This duality—the internet as both a site of liberation and a source of trauma—sets the stage for the rest of her story. The same technology that lets her explore her sexuality also leaves her feeling isolated and “disgusting,” a feeling that many queer people raised in the 2000s will recognize.

Part Two: The Blogosphere – Internalized Homophobia and Speculation

The second major phase of Gutowitz’s internet history takes place in the 2000s, when gossip blogs like Perez Hilton dominate online culture. In Chapter 3, Gutowitz examines how Perez Hilton’s treatment of queer celebrities, especially Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson, fueled her own internalized homophobia. Hilton called Ronson “lezbot” and “SaMANtha,” sold “Blame Samantha” T-shirts, and implied that Ronson’s queerness made her a predatory influence on Lohan. Gutowitz internalized these messages: she began to see lesbianism as an illness, something she could “fight” if she were strong enough.

The internet here serves as a vector for homophobic speculation that directly harmed real people. Ronson lost a defamation suit and was ordered to pay Hilton’s legal fees. But Gutowitz also points out that she herself participated in this culture, refreshing gossip sites compulsively, hungry for any scrap of information about celebrities’ private lives. She later becomes a writer who engages in similar speculation—for instance, analyzing Taylor Swift’s lyrics for queer subtext (the “Gaylor” phenomenon). She asks whether she has become the villain, like Hilton, but concludes that her intent is different: she seeks community, not harm. This complexity is central to the theme. The internet’s role in queer connection is not simply good or bad; it can be both, depending on intent, power, and context.

Part Three: Surveillance, Community, and the FBI Visit

The most dramatic example of the internet’s dual role occurs in 2018, when Gutowitz tweets a joke about Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation using a Game of Thrones meme. Republican users report her to the FBI, and two agents show up at her door. As Chapter 1 details, the interrogation is absurd—the agents want to know about her meme, not any real threat. Meanwhile, the same week, a domestic terrorist named Cesar Sayoc mailed bombs to prominent Democrats. The FBI had ignored his violent tweets, yet Gutowitz was questioned for a joke. This contrast underscores the uneven way the internet’s surveillance powers are applied: queer and female voices are policed, while actual dangerous speech goes unchecked.

Yet the same platform that brought the FBI to her door also gave Gutowitz her career and community. She built a Twitter following by “compulsively oversharing” about pop culture, queerness, and politics, feeding a “voracious, grinding beast” that demands attention and validation. She acknowledges that the internet has crushed her “time and time again,” but she keeps returning to it. This is the core contradiction: the internet is the source of both her deepest shame (the FBI visit, the fear of being outed) and her most profound connections (finding queer friends, coming out, finding love). The character pages for Emma and Darcy further illustrate this; Gutowitz’s relationships are often mediated through shared online obsessions, from Orange Is the New Black to Taylor Swift albums.

Symbol and Character Connections

Gutowitz uses several recurring symbols that tie into the internet theme. The “yearn cage”—the idea that queer people are taught to yearn but never act—is reinforced by online spaces that offer endless representation yet also endless distance. The “sex bench” and Britney Spears’s “I’m a Slave 4 U” evoke the commodification of female queerness for the male gaze, a dynamic amplified by the internet’s viral spread. The pop-concert countdown captures the anticipatory thrill of online fandom—the sense that if you just refresh enough, you’ll find belonging.

Characters like Darcy (Gutowitz’s college crush) and Sam (her best friend bonded over Orange Is the New Black) represent the real-life connections that the internet made possible. Darcy is introduced through a shared love of online fan culture; Sam and Gutowitz deepen their friendship by watching the same Netflix show at the same time, texting reactions. In contrast, the FBI agents embody the surveillance state that monitors queer expression online. Gutowitz’s own character page highlights her identity as a “pioneer” who straddles both worlds—she remembers the homophobic 2000s and enjoys the visibility of the 2020s, but she also carries the trauma of being watched.

Complexity and Contradiction

The internet’s role in Girls Can Kiss Now is not one-sided. Gutowitz is careful to show that she is both a victim of online harm and a participant in it. She consumed gossip blogs that outed people; she now writes about celebrities’ sexualities. She was interrogated by the FBI, but she also revels in the attention her tweets receive. She calls herself “brain-poisoned” by the 2000s, yet she cannot stop scrolling. This complexity is most explicit in Chapter 3, where she compares herself to Perez Hilton: “I don’t believe Perez Hilton’s intent was to benefit anyone but himself… that’s why the way that we gossip has changed.” She suggests that the difference between harmful speculation and community-building speculation is intent and cultural context.

Moreover, Gutowitz shows that the internet’s capacity for trauma is not just about external threats (FBI, bullies) but also about internalized messages. The online culture of the 2000s taught her that lesbianism was shameful, predatory, or tragic. She had to unlearn these messages by finding new online spaces—like the Orange Is the New Black fandom, or the queer corners of Twitter—that offered a different narrative. The internet thus becomes a site of re-education as much as a site of corruption.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Gutowitz’s early experience with AOL chat rooms foreshadow the FBI visit in 2018?
   Both involve anonymous online interaction that attracts unwanted attention. In the chat rooms, she fears being caught by her parents; later, she is caught by federal agents. The pattern of seeking connection and then being shamed or punished for it repeats across the book.

2. What role does the Perez Hilton blog play in Gutowitz’s internalized homophobia?
   Hilton’s coverage of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson framed queerness as predatory and linked it to addiction. Gutowitz internalized this by seeing lesbianism as a threat she had to “fight,” which delayed her coming out for years.

3. How does the internet both enable and complicate Gutowitz’s relationship with Darcy?
   Gutowitz and Darcy bond over shared online interests like fan forums, but the internet also provides a space for Gutowitz to yearn instead of act. The “yearn cage” is reinforced by endless online interaction without physical intimacy.

4. Why does Gutowitz compare herself to Perez Hilton? What conclusion does she reach?
   She recognizes that she engages in speculation about celebrities’ sexualities, just as Hilton did. However, she argues that her intent is to build community and visibility, not to harm, and that the cultural context has shifted to make speculation more acceptable when done with care.

5. What does the FBI’s response to Gutowitz’s meme versus Cesar Sayoc’s threats reveal about internet surveillance?
   It shows that the government disproportionately targets queer and female voices for speech deemed provocative, while ignoring real violence. Gutowitz’s joke meme was investigated, but Sayoc’s explicit bomb threats were not acted upon until after he mailed explosives.