Potential risk in the “contrast-field”: queer-positioning between facts and assumptions within research on incels

Three years ago, as a PhD student, I was conducting an in-depth interview with the CEO of a halal-food company to discuss Islamic understandings of masculinity and gender relations through political identifications. As a queer¹ and pro-feminist scholar, I was anxious during the interview, skipping some interesting points, interrupting unnecessarily. The truth is, I was apprehensive that a few questions later, my focus was going to be on LGBTIQ+. When I asked, the respondent looked embarrassed, smiled slightly, and told me: “Brother, you, and me, two grown men, could you imagine such a thing? It’s disgusting, unnatural … a perversion.” As predicted, this created a freezing moment: I did my best with straight-acting, completed the interview, only wanting to go home to move out of this body-that-does-not-belong-to-me from this space-that-does-not-exist-for-me, thrash it, refresh, and end this “come-back-to-the-closet” moment from which I suffered countless times.

Some traumas or personal trajectories can create corporeal pain, which is not only the history of feelings, but also the living form of this history within the body (Sara Ahmed 2004). Some words, gestures or voices become not only violent attacks on the self, but also triggers of unwanted moments of the past. Then, working on “dangerous,” hostile, elusive, or saturated fields has hazardous effects on the researcher’s positioning (Magali and Boumaza and Aurélie Campana 2007) and well-being. Hence, the emotionality of the researcher becomes an important criterion defining risks—the researcher’s possibility of sustaining physical or emotional harm threatening the research goals—in these difficult fields. I refer to them as “contrast-fields” as they are in contradiction to the researcher’s social or political identity, close to their private selves (Anita Lavorgna and Lisa Sugiura 2022). The literature on the researcher’s body and emotions points out that emotions are sign-producers and leading channels when conducting ethnographic-qualitative research (Elizabeth Horge-Freeman 2018); one’s emotionality, queer or not, impacts methodological choices (Kathleen Blee 1988). Moreover, I suggest that we also need to focus on the researcher’s perception that is shaped by their emotions and corporeal memory. Here, by focusing on Sigrid Schmitz and Sara Ahmed’s (2014) ideas on emotions as bodily responses, I claim that one’s methodological choices often involve strategies to prevent the risk of being harmed physically or emotionally. By focusing on the methodological choices, the researcher makes to avoid such risks, this paper contributes to the field of “emotions in research.” By going beyond the recommendations of managing one’s emotions, I suggest how using feelings as a guide to research design will enable one to continue to conduct research whilst maintaining emotional safety. On a positive note, I thus argue that affective barriers are by no means “data-destroyers,” but in fact serve as methodological safeguards for a more confident and safe research design.

To deepen this discussion, I will mobilise insights from my research on incels—a violent, digitally politicised misogynist group of men (Bruce Hoffman, Jacob and Ware and Ezra Shapiro 2020)—as well as my personal and academic past. First, I argue that risk diagnosis is based on the interpretation of facts about the studied object: the pre-established scientific data on incels gives a general idea/estimation. Second, I focus on the role of emotions during the interpretation process vis-à-vis this knowledge. I then conclude by highlighting the main strategies that a researcher can adopt to deal with the challenges of the contrast-field without compromising data collection.

Estimation of risk in incel studies: community image and scientific data

As researchers, our first step to estimate risk could be gathering and analysing general knowledge and (inter-)personal experiences on the research topic. The scientific knowledge and my preliminary work show that the incel community has different modes of action, such as slutshaming, disclosure posts or, in extreme cases, physical violence (Olivia Young 2019). Yet the common denominator of these actions is hatred of women and sexual minorities (Sarah Daly 2022). This hatred is expressed through revengeful ideas, as practices strengthening incels’ self-furious image, which are a possible reason that researchers may choose a less interactive or participative research method. Many scholars working in this field analyse tweets (Robert Brooks, Daniel Russo-Batterham and Khandis Blake 2022), threads within the blogs (Roberta O’Malley, Karen Holt and Thomas Holt 2022; Alyssa Glace, Tesla and Dover and Judith Zatkin 2021), or comments (Catharina O’Donnell and Eran Shor 2022); or write/produce literature reviews (Grace Sharkey 2022). Yet some scholars use participatory approaches (Kaitlyn Regehr 2022; Sarah Daly and Shon Reed 2022) based on in-depth interviews. The same researchers highlight their concerns about the incel field by describing it as angry, emotionally taxing, and exclusionary. Without specific tactics, reflexivity, and a strong capacity to desensitise, the field can make the researcher vulnerable, while provoking anger attacks from the participants (Daly 2022; Lisa Sugiura 2021). For instance, in my case I decided to prevent the incel community’s angry tones by avoiding “face-to-face” interaction. In the following section I will discuss how emotion-based reasoning—or what I refer to as affective rationality—not only protects researchers, but also stabilises their research motivation.

Bodily calls on the risk and affective rationality

The potential risk in the contrast-field is often calculated through the accordance between scientific facts [e.g., the studied group’s specific features, early publications’ methodological choices, etc.] and all assumptions based on these facts and the interpretation of past experiences. However, emotions play a crucial role in the research design: feelings and bodily responses to a contrast-field also define the risk. To decide the level of engagement from a participative approach, emotions can guide our reasoning that prioritises our physical-mental protection. That is why this reasoning also relies on past experiences not only in scientific terms, but also in personal, affective, and political terms. When it comes to studying incels, my first emotion was fear, linked to the discomfort I experienced during my previous research on conservative masculine networks with a hyper-heterosexualised image [e.g., experiences of bodily alienation moments due to straight-acting or trying to empathise with hate speech and violent discourses against sexual minorities]. During this fieldwork, I constantly mobilised heteronormative and masculine words, expressions, body language, clothing, or accessorising as a “camouflage-strategy” aimed at achieving acceptance by the representatives of the field (Cindi Katz 1994). However, I also observed by straight-acting that “compulsory-heterosexuality” is a basic standard to establish male solidarity (Mélanie Gourarier et al., 2015) and maintain communication with the participants. I had to react as objectively as possible, not only to LGBTIQ+phobic discourses, but also violent, discriminatory, and angry attitudes (Ozan Sousbois [Soybakis] 2021). My political subjectivity therefore sought to position myself in a “space-of-betweenness” (Katz 1994) within the spectrum ranging from sexual democracy to an anti-feminist-patriarchal mindset. This act was disturbing as it was against the principles of my empowerment process as a queer-person, and it translates further into a fatigue of my emotional skills from receiving attacks on my sexual identification, transforming my body as a potential “devil-stoning place”. Moreover, it would be especially difficult for me, in the incel context, to face dehumanising jokes or arguments in a non-judgmental way, which could provoke confrontations without stimulating conversation. I then let my feelings influence my methodological choices to prevent unnecessary tensions. This rationality that I qualify as affective listens to my body and its memory, by negotiating the ideals of “scientific objectivity”. My decision on the methodology of incel research is thus guided by both the inherited emotions from my old research and by further past experiences. By having knowledge of incel communities’ aggressive and angry image, as well as their violent acts, I recognised my unavailability for a participative approach. I decided to minimise traumatic déjà-vu moments linked to coming-out difficulties, straight-acting, or gay-shaming, to feel less paralysed and more productive towards a research topic I am passionate about. This feeling founded a crucial moment where I acknowledged that mutual learning upon common ground between me and incels would not be easily established in that specific space and time.

Concluding thoughts

Although it is always possible to leave or suspend a contrast-field, or even not be involved in such a topic from the very beginning, one should not feel obliged to abandon topics or fields that are interesting or stimulating just because they are contrast-fields. Fieldwork is a dynamic and self-transforming experience (Eleanor Knott 2019; Daly 2022) since researchers may discover a balance between their self-challenge and safe-zones by repositioning themselves during different stages of their study. As illustrated above, researchers can (re-)design their study to maximise their motivation, creativity and efficacity in the comprehension of the phenomenon, based on an affective rationality, calculating the risk according to emotional, mental, and scientific criteria. Correspondingly, the diagnosis of the risk is affective, corporeal, and rational, since the risk identification is managed through the scientific data about the field, and the emotional balance of the researcher, which is also guided by the memory of past experiences. By linking my experiences to Ahmed’s thoughts on the power of fear, disgust, or anger in the establishment of hateful collective identities (2004: 42–82), I reframed the risk within an emotional context where the well-doing of research is not only defined through the security of the researcher’s body, personal data and career goals, or the institutional expectations, but also emotional and mental preparedness for a difficult field. I argued that as researchers we could be more analytical, equipped, and motivated to handle different triggers if we recognised the guiding capacity of emotions in the methodological decision-making. In such instances, the research motivation can be replaced on a sustainable basis that will further benefit data collection and analysis.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions and the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS).

Notes on contributors

Ozan Félix Sousbois

Ozan Félix Sousbois received his BA in sociology from Galatasaray University in Istanbul (2013), MA in gender studies at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (2014) in Paris and his PhD (2021) in the same institution in sociology. His PhD research was on political masculinities and far-right conservatism in Turkey. He also completed a second BA in fine arts at Sorbonne University (2021). As a sociologist and young artist, Dr. Sousbois is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Media and Social Sciences at the University of Stavanger. His recent research focuses on gender radicalization and the visual cultures of incel-communities. His main research areas are political masculinities, material cultures and aesthetics, manospheres, conservatisms, and Turkish studies. Email: [email protected]. Academic profile: https://www.uis.no/nb/profile/ozan-sousbois

Notes

1. I am using the term “queer” to refer to all LGBTIQ+ researchers’ (self-)marginalised position within the difficult fields due to their gender identity/expressions and sexual orientations, and the fieldworks’ heteronormativity.