Researching while queer: a research note about a genderqueer lesbian conducting qualitative research in the southeastern United States

ABSTRACT

In this research note, I use an autoethnographic approach to examine the challenges of qualitative research for queer scholars, and to bring the embodied, interactive, and gendered research experience to life. I compare and contrast how my queer embodiment and identity was received, or erased, in two different research contexts, both within the southeastern United States. The first study discussed involved in-person and phone interviews with Mississippi Christians about their views of gay and lesbian civil rights. The second study included phone interviews with trans men across the southeastern United States. I discuss my experiences as a queer qualitative researcher to demonstrate why self-reflection, reflexivity, and self-care are essential to queer, feminist, and critical methodologies across qualitative research. I analyze thoughts and feelings that arose when my interviewees challenged my feminist and queer commitment to social justice and reversed the expected power dynamics in a research relationship. The goal is to help prepare queer researchers for the emotional difficulties and trauma of qualitative research as they enter the qualitative research field.

KEYWORDS:

• Qualitative methods
• emotional labour
• queer
• trans studies

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Georgia Southern University for the generous Research Start-Up Funds and the Scholarly Pursuit Award for data collection on both of the projects described in this research note. I would also like to thank Sarah Rogers and the editors and anonymous reviewers at the International Journal of Social Research Methodology for their helpful feedback to strengthen this note.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Baker A. Rogers

Baker A. Rogers is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. Their research focuses on inequality, specifically examining the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion in the southeastern United States. Their book, Conditionally Accepted: Christians’ Perspectives on Sexuality and Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights, was released with Rutgers University Press in December 2019, and their book, Trans Men in the South: Becoming Men, was released with Lexington Books in January 2020. Their work is also published in Journal of Interpersonal Violence; Gender & Society; Qualitative Sociology; Sociological Inquiry; International Journal of Transgenderism; Sexualities; Review of Religious Research; and Feminist Teacher.