Listening with quiet curiosity: Feminist and queer reflections on interviews with the “wrong” people

Abstract

Queer and feminist research centralises issues of power and relationalities; methodologies frequently emphasise the process of conducting research with people who are marginalised. The queer and feminist methodological literature also opens a door to complicating binary understandings of “right”/ “wrong” “powerful”/ “disempowered” relations, including those between the researcher and her research subjects. The “wrong” people are those who do not conform with expectations of typical queer and feminist research participants.

In this paper, we introduce interviews conducted in Ireland with people who held concerns or oppositions to socio-legal changes in favour of increased rights related to gender, sexualities and/or abortion. We explore three moments in which Carol, author 1 for this article, did not contradict statements with which she disagreed. Building on queer and feminist insights for research that listens quietly with curiosity, we argue in favour of methodological approaches that move past considerations of complicity and platforming, to explore what discomfort can tell us about the interplay between research encounters and dynamic contexts.