Reflections on the Research Process

This Section discusses the researcher’s experiences of and reflections upon the research process. While overall the process of conducting the research was a fascinating and invaluable experience, two main difficulties were encountered by the researcher during the research.

This Section is written in the first-person, in order articulate these reflections in the terms in which I experienced them.

The first difficulty encountered during the research was in the securing of participant recruitment sites (as discussed in Chapter 2.3) and in securing interview sites (as discussed in Chapter 2.5), in part due to the rigid ethical stipulations applied to recruiting participants for this research (discussed in Chapter 2.4). Alongside impacting upon the progress of the research, securing these sites was an arduous and difficult process, and temporarily caused concerns that the planned empirical research would not come to fruition (due to the lack of suitable numbers of participants) and the research would be subject to redesign mid-PhD.

Having identified the area of in-depth research with young people on pornography as significant and requiring further research, at times it felt as if there was a real hesitance from both the potential participant recruitment sites and from internal institutional structures to support the research. This apparent hesitance was frustrating, as this research is so necessary in part due to this exact hesitance to engage in dialogues on the content of pornography. I often thought to myself – I’m not simply undertaking this research for flippant fun or to raise eyebrows – and it’s in part this unwillingness to accept the existence, content and people’s consumption of pornography that got us in this situation in the first place! That said, the empirical research did happen, and the findings are fascinating.

116 | P a g e The second – and most personally significant – difficulty I encountered pertained to the nature of the research undertaken, and particularly in discussing pornography in-depth in an interview context with participants. The experience carried emotional impacts and, in some instances, was very demanding. It was a real challenge to sit in a room with a stranger – sometimes, at the height of participant recruitment, three or four times over the course of a working week – and discuss the content of pornography in immense depth and detail. In one instance, where a young person spoke extensively about rape and having viewed ‘real sex videos’ that potentially depicted sexual violence, I found myself disassociating in the interview context and only learned the full extent of their discussions when I listened back to the interview tapes. I also travelled inter- and intra-city throughout the fieldwork, meaning the experience of the interview was often just a part of a long working day.

The knowledge that in-depth research in this area is scarce – and the resulting importance of this research to further our understandings of young people and pornography – encouraged me to continue when, at times, the content and volume of data became overwhelming. This knowledge, compounded by my experiences of conducting the research, also made me question – is this partly why there is so little in-depth research in this area – because it can be so emotionally challenging to undertake?

Indeed, at times I encountered views expressed by participants in the interview context that I personally felt to be problematic and difficult to listen to – and to listen to again when transcribing the interviews, and to work with intensively when analysing the data and writing this thesis. Several participants expressed views in the interview context that were supportive of rape myths (such as perceptions that there is rape and there is ‘real’ rape) and affinities for

‘rape fantasy’, ‘rough’ or violent pornography, while a couple of participants also expressed transphobic views or discomfort towards gay or queer sexuality. As a researcher, I was in a difficult position in these instances and it was challenging to strike a balance between my role as a researcher and my personal perspectives, experiences and identities. It was of paramount importance to ensure that the interviews fostered a non-judgemental environment for the participants and so, as a researcher, I felt it to be both unethical and antithetical to ensuring a non-judgemental environment to challenge the sentiments expressed by participants in an interview context. These instances felt disempowering, as I was at once a researcher with a responsibility towards the young people and a young person with my own perspectives on

117 | P a g e these issues, and it was therefore challenging at times to reconcile these two identities when conducting the field research.

More positively, the experience of conducting in-depth research in this challenging area enabled me to develop and hone my interview skills and nurtured my ability to confidently discuss complex and sensitive issues. It was also personally empowering and reassuring to listen to the perspectives of other young people who were also critical of many pornographic depictions, yet were also not anti-sex nor pro-censorship.

Alongside the content of the research, during my Doctoral studies I worked as a Research Assistant on projects and publications pertaining to rape, domestic violence and ‘extreme’

pornography, and on service delivery with vulnerable LGBT and disabled people with a variety of intersecting issues. While incredibly rewarding and fulfilling opportunities, when carrying out these roles in conjunction with my Doctoral studies at times it was exhausting, and I therefore had to carve out a space in my life to re-energise and practice self-care.

As is the nature of Doctoral research, it is easy to feel isolated when conducting research. I was very fortunate in that if I needed to reach out and discuss issues I had encountered, my supervisors – Clare and Nicole – were only an e-mail or phone-call away. Likewise, I had a friend also conducting Doctoral research on a sensitive topic who understood the challenges this type of research can present. However, I feel that I did not make full use of this support network, predominantly due to a concern of causing distress or discomfort to others – despite these others having built their careers on researching issues pertaining to gender-based violence. In fact, despite the importance of this research, I am concerned too that you, the reader, may experience distress or discomfort when reading the Chapters that follow. As I said to the participants during the fieldwork: Feel free to take breaks – or even leave – at any point. There are also information sheets detailing sources of support and information in Appendices 8 and 9.

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