Hi folks –

I finally sat down and did some scheduling and realized that further interviews aren’t going to be scheduled until this summer. I’ll email people this coming weekend so everyone knows where things are.

I recorded another video in which I talk a little about researcher authenticity and trust, a little animatedly.

So, really, what I talked about here is that one of the reasons that I made this site is to be authentic, honest, and open. What I operate on in all of this is that we all have personalities and perspectives that we bring to the table in research. To ignore that, or to pretend that you can somehow orient yourself in a way that you’re somehow “objective” is kind of disingenuous. Often, what happens is that people who are in the dominant majority (for instance, a straight person) are considered unbiased while people who are in minority groups (for instance, someone who identifies as LGBT). The example I brought up in the video was the judge for the Prop 8 case, a gay man, who was questioned in the media because “how could he rule in an unbiased way on a case that pertained to him”?

Obviously, a straight person isn’t unbiased, but because that judge was a member of a non-dominant group ruling on an issue that would affect him, his position became suspect.

What I’m saying in all of this is that the idea that there is some unbiased state of being is – from my perspective – an immensely flawed idea. What we can do to help people who read our work make decisions about our abilities to orient ourselves appropriately and present our analyses and thoughts clearly is to provide as much information about where we are coming from as possible. And for me, that includes the values of authenticity, openness, and trust within the interviews, with my research participants, and with whoever it is reading this site.

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