Navigating a feminist ethics of care, ethnographic methods, and academic activism in researching men’s rights and the far right: a researcher’s struggles

Abstract

Researchers using feminist theory in immersive qualitative research like ethnography must contend with a feminist ethics of care, where the researcher is compelled to treat their participants like people, engaging with and protecting them from potential harm (Hesse-Biber, 2012). But what happens when the act of protecting the individual conflicts with the feminist imperative to “repair our world” (Stanley & Wise, 2013, p. 23)? Beyond dated critiques of feminist ethnography (Stacey, 1988), there are emotional and epistemological challenges when working with ethnography and feminist theory on what Fielding (1990) calls “unloved groups,” for example groups on the far and extreme-right. The conflict that gives rise to these difficulties is between the emancipatory and equity work essential to feminism, and the imperative to expose anti-equity rhetoric and ideology. Using a long-term study of two men’s communities on Reddit as grounding for its theorization, this chapter will explore the ethical dilemmas and decision-making when determining what content, who’s name, and what details to publish in academic work on groups that have the potential to cause social (and physical) harm. It will examine the misalignments between theory and practice when researcher interest in exposing dangerous ideologies conflicts with the call to protect. What meta-ethical hurdles might we jump to justify our own practice? Using the author’s experience in having to address these challenging issues, this chapter will expand the conversation between feminist ethics, ethnographic work, and academic activism, and how these can (and cannot) come together in research on the far-right.