Social science researchers are often involved in research that means something personal to them. Like the adage that young writers just write about themselves, young researchers often research topics which they are close to. This is one reason why reflexivity is so important to researchers of this kind. Reflexivity is defined as an awareness of the self, a monitoring of one’s practices, and a deliberation on courses of action (May & Perry, 2017). This process becomes yet more complicated when a researcher approaches what ethics committees term ‘sensitive topics’, such as the area in which I work: sexuality and relationship studies. Specifically, to be reflexive about relationships is to be upfront about what we as researchers know about relationships, and this is knowledge which is not always garnered from academic literature, but knowledge which nonetheless deserves exploration. It is the process of challenging what I knew about relationships and sexuality that I want to address in this blog post, specifically how my relationship with my partner challenged my pre-existing beliefs about relationships and lead to a new outlook on how I approached my research on bisexual men’s relationships.

When I began writing my application to the ESRC for a PhD studentship, I was single, and this was reflected in the project I proposed. I was interested in a social problem which affected me: biphobia, sexual prejudice against bisexual people. In particular I was interested in exploring how this type of bigotry manifested itself when people were trying to start relationships and how it affected relationships. I had had experiences of being rejected because of my sexuality, and this outlook was unfortunately validated by the research literature, which found that people tended to generally view bisexual men less favourably than bisexual women, lesbians and gay people (Herek, 2002). Additionally, heterosexual women viewed bi men as less attractive and less desirable to date compared to straight men (Gleason, Vencill & Sprankle, 2018). I think that my internalised biphobia also affected how I went about designing the project, which at that stage would involve separate interviews with bisexual men and their partners. I think some part of me wanted to ‘catch out’ bi men’s partners and expose them as having biphobic beliefs, but this was just my own case of internalised biphobia talking, an outlook which viewed myself and other bisexual men as unlovable.

This was obviously a bad approach in hindsight, but I wouldn’t come to see it that way until the first year of my PhD started, when I met my partner. We met each other on Tinder, and I was upfront with her about my bisexuality straight away. To my surprise the only question she raised about my bisexuality was whether it reaffirmed the gender binary. Having a partner who was supportive of my sexuality definitely helped me to banish my internalised biphobia, and as a result came to change the way I viewed by PhD research. I decided to interview partners together, and became more interested about how relationships were co-constructed and places of safety for sexual minority persons. I began to examine more positive aspects of the research as a whole, including looking at broader questions of identity construction and how relationships are positively impacted by bisexuality. When I came to conduct my fieldwork, this change of outlook was validated hugely by my participants’ experiences. Not only were almost all of my participants also in relationships with other bisexual people (and therefore the question of latently biphobic partners rendered moot), all the participants discussed was the overwhelmingly positive effect having a bisexual partner had on their relationships.  

In the end, I found that embracing my own experiences of relationships had a beneficial impact on my research on relationships. Stories like mine can be used to ‘reflect on, ask questions about, and imagine change from inside the “politically and personally problematic worlds of everyday life”’ (Denzin, cited in Adams & Holman Jones, 2011, p. 109).  This is still not without its pitfalls, as engaging in this kind of reflexive practice in discussing my relationship with my partner does raise its own set of ethical issues. As with any relationship, be it with participants or intimate partners, consent must be the foundation. Similarly, we can question who has the right to tell certain stories from a first person perspective, who has the authority to use “I” (Adams and Holman Jones, 2011), and not to acknowledge who else has shaped these narratives, be it participants or intimate partners. Just as reflexivity can inform intuitive decision making processes and bring about more sensitive ethical practice (Rodríguez-Dorans, 2018) I would encourage more researchers working in ‘sensitive’ areas of study to be more upfront about the personal relationships they have with the topic, and to reflexively examine how this influences how they go about doing what they do. Just as the personal can be political, it can equally be informative for research practice.

 

References

Adams, T. E., & Holman Jones, S. (2011). Telling stories: Reflexivity, queer theory, and autoethnography. Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 11(2), 108-116. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708611401329

Gleason, N., Vencill, J. A., & Sprankle, E. (2018). Swipe left on the bi guys: examining attitudes toward dating and being sexual with bisexual individuals. Journal of Bisexuality, 18(4), 516-534.

Herek, G. M. (2002). Heterosexuals' attitudes toward bisexual men and women in the United States. Journal of Sex Research, 39(4), 264-274.

May, T., & Perry, B. (2017). Reflexivity: The essential guide. Sage.

Rodríguez-Dorans, E. (2018). Reflexivity and ethical research practice while interviewing on sexual topics. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(6), 747-760. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2018.1490980

 

Bio: Sam Lawton is an doctoral researcher at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His ESRC-funded PhD project is entitled ‘Sexual Prejudice against Bisexual Men: Barriers to Initiating and Maintaining Relationships’. You can find Sam on Twitter @BiMenResearch where he tweets about politics, society and sexuality.

 

First published: 16 April 2021

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