Becoming a sexademic: Reflections on a ‘dirty’ research project

Introduction

Research on sex and sexuality can be understood as a form of ‘dirty work’. By association, researchers of sex and sexuality can experience social ‘taint’ and stigmatisation, labelling them ‘dirty workers’ (Irvine, 2014a). For these reasons, examining researchers’ experiences may provide important insights into the professional and personal implications of dirty research endeavours. Hammond and Kingston (2014) consider reflexive practice beyond our direct research encounters as necessary as research is never undertaken in a vacuum. This article attends to this need and illuminates the many ways that the lives of sex-related researchers can be affected during their projects. This reflexive article provides a selection of insights from my journey through a ‘dirty’ research project on pornography as a young, female postgraduate student. In this article, I provide an overview of the various institutional, professional and personal challenges I faced doing my research. In so doing, I emphasise the importance of considering pornography research as a form of dirty work. I discuss challenges encountered during the ethical review process and demonstrate how such concerns may work to restrict the types of knowledge that can be generated about pornography, and by whom. This article also provides an overview of the professional challenges I faced doing research on pornography which support prior academic work in this area, but signal that such experiences are not confined to the walls of the ivory tower. Lastly, this article explores some of the many personal challenges I endured during the research process, and the struggle involved in separating the ‘pornography researcher’ identity from my own personal identity.

Understanding sex and pornography research as dirty work

The concept of ‘dirty work’ originates from American sociologist Everett Hughes’ (1958) research on types of work that, despite their public need, are viewed by society as either distasteful, disgusting, or demeaning. The physical and social nature of the work, or its moral perception, is tainted in some way. When this taint becomes pervasive, the stigma associated with the work can tarnish the entire occupation, with those employed in dirty occupations becoming vulnerable to experiencing stigma by contagion (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999), and labelled ‘dirty workers’ (Ashforth and Kreiner, 2014). While academic work does not seem a natural, or typical, place for considering dirty work, some forms of research can leave researchers vulnerable to experiencing social taint (Sanders-McDonagh, 2014), particularly when the research involves groups or subjects that experience stigma themselves, such as people who use drugs, sex workers, or people living with HIV.

Research on sex and sexuality can be broadly considered as a form of dirty work. Irvine (2014a) considers sex and sexuality research as ‘dirty work’ due to the institutionalised practices within the university that shape the ways and forms of knowledge production and contribute to the field’s marginalisation. Irvine (2014a) considers that ‘cultural anxieties related to sexuality can produce cognitive and emotional bias, which, when enacted through the practices of institutional actors, naturalizes the inequality of dirty work’ (p. 653). While avenues for conducting contemporary, and critical, sexual inquiry have expanded dramatically, research on sex continues to struggle for academic legitimacy (Irvine, 2018). The marginalisation of sex and sexuality research within the academy is common, with sex and sexuality researchers ‘tolerated but reviled’ and ‘acknowledged, but deemed unimportant’ (Msibi, 2014: 669).

Researchers frequently lament the institutional review processes and barriers which hinder the successful completion of sex and sexuality projects (Irvine, 2012, 2014a; Jones, 2018), and reflexive insights from sex and sexuality researchers have provided powerful accounts of the many challenges endured both inside and outside of fieldwork. Indeed, it is acknowledged that even speaking out about the experiences of engaging in sexuality research can be a risky endeavour (Attwood, 2010). Professionally, researchers report their work is trivialised and struggles for validity from colleagues (Fahs et al., 2017). This is a particular concern for graduate students, and not doing sex research until tenure has become a common refrain (Attwood and Hunter, 2009; Burke, 2014). Researching dirty subjects can have implications for teaching and career progression, and the ‘relative absence of teaching opportunities for sexualities scholars’ is a testament to these difficulties (McCormack, 2014: 675). The publication of sex and sexuality research can be a unique challenge (Allen, 2019; Irvine, 2014a), and disseminating research can leave researchers open to attacks and hostility (Fahs et al., 2017; McCormack, 2013).

Beyond the professional pitfalls of sex research, it can also have significant personal consequences. While by no means exhaustive, these experiences include discrimination and online abuse (Javaid, 2020), invasive personal questioning following conference presentations (Fahs et al., 2017), experiencing stigma by contagion (Hammond and Kingston, 2014) and identity crises (Israel, 2002). In sum, the institutional, professional and personal challenges that sex and sexuality researchers endure throughout the research process cement sex research as a form of dirty work. Through engaging in dirty research projects, sex researchers, by extension, are thus vulnerable to being labelled dirty workers.

Like sex and sexuality research more broadly, pornography studies has struggled for academic legitimacy (Attwood and Smith, 2014). Gabriel (2017) suggests pornography scholars occupy an ‘unusual subject position’ as they

are clearly engaging with a field that is, for various reasons, increasingly becoming the subject of academic attention. It is also one that, because of its implications, is on the cutting edge of social science research. Yet academic and social conservatism together tend to promote a rather negative view of the field, with reactions ranging from suspicion and disdain, at the least, to open hostility and its explicit rejection as a valid field of study (p. 308)

The first hurdle: Obtaining ethical approval

In 2015, I enrolled in a PhD in criminology. As a 24-year-old, cisgender, heterosexual, Pākehā woman, I was interested in examining the perceived influence of pornography on the lives of heterosexual in emerging adulthood. ¹ At the time, there was very little written about men’s and women’s experiences with viewing contemporary pornography in Aotearoa/New Zealand, so the research was largely exploratory in nature. As a qualitative scholar, I wanted to examine people’s lived experiences with, and of, pornography through in-depth interviews. I was curious to examine how heterosexual men and women understood pornography to have affected their lives, if at all, and whether these understandings were gendered in nature. As I read about the unique challenges involved in obtaining ethical approval for sex and sexuality research, it became clear that such work is often viewed as inherently dangerous or ‘risky’ for researchers, their research subjects, and for wider institutional reputations (Irvine, 2012). This can result in their projects coming under closer scrutiny during the ethical review process due to the red flags such topics may raise, particularly in the eyes of conservative committee members (Webber and Brunger, 2018). Armed with this knowledge, I was under no illusion that getting the green light for my research would be straightforward.

While my application was under review, I had a chance encounter with a member of the committee and was told that my application had not been received favourably due to concerns about my age and my naiveté as a researcher. These discussions purportedly occurred despite my age not being disclosed on the application, nor my prior experience doing sensitive interviews with victims/survivors of sexual violence. It was suggested that including a curriculum vita with my application may have helped justify why I was ‘suitably qualified’ to undertake this research. Hearing this before receiving the feedback exacerbated my concerns about how the review process may play out. When formal feedback was received, concerns about my age and naiveté were not openly disclosed; however, they may have been contributing factors in some of the committee’s concerns. At the first round of review, eight areas of concern were raised, two of which I will now discuss: concerns about the legality of conversations, and concerns about my safety in the research process.

Initially, I proposed including people between the ages of 17 and 30 in the research. While viewing pornography is restricted to those aged 18 and over in Aotearoa/New Zealand, it is accepted that many young people have seen internet pornography, and some young New Zealanders view pornography on a regular basis (Office of Film and Literature Classification, 2018). I was asked to exclude 17-year-old participants, which felt out of touch with the realities of young people’s lives in the digital age. On the one hand, there is widespread societal concern about the harmful impacts of pornography for young people (Flood, 2009), yet on the other, attempts to explore young people’s experiences were being limited, presumably due to worries about young people disclosing their involvement in ‘illegal’ behaviours. As the process continued, it became clear that the committee had deeper concerns about me discussing some types of sex and pornography. Their concerns appeared to signal an overarching view of pornography research as inherently ‘risky’, and I questioned whether their aforementioned concerns about my age influenced their assessment of my overall capability to manage complicated ethical challenges in such risky research terrain.

I expected that most participants would discuss their knowledge of, or engagement with, pornography that involved (presumably) adult performers. That said, I could not exclude the potential for encountering discussions about content involving children. Existing research on people who view child sexual exploitation material is limited, and questions abound regarding whether such research should be conducted, or whether researchers should protect the confidentiality of participants when disclosures of harmful behaviours involving children are made (Ray et al., 2010). At the same time, research with people who have not been convicted of such an offence, but have viewed it in the past, can help to shed light on an underreported issue, so there is a tension in this area around how best to manage these conversations. The committee was rightly concerned about these discussions arising, and I was told to specifically warn participants against any criminal disclosure in the information sheets and at the starting introduction to any interview. If disclosures of viewing content involving children were made, these were to be disclosed to my supervisor, and in conjunction with them, the police. Further, I was instructed that any disclosure of this kind must result in immediate ejection of the participant.

I questioned the precedent such a position may set for conversations about pornography in my research, including those that may be deemed ‘objectionable’. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Films, Videos and Publications Act (1993) governs the classification of objectionable publications, and a publication is deemed objectionable if it promotes or supports a range of behaviours, including: the sexual exploitation of children or young people; the use of violence or coercion in sexual conduct; necrophilia; the use or urine or excrement in association with degrading or dehumanising sexual conduct; bestiality; and acts of torture, or the infliction of extreme violence and/or cruelty. In theory, prohibiting conversations about previous encounters with material involving children, then, could also close the door to conversations about other forms of objectionable material, including sexually violent depictions. The tension here relates to how I would be able to assess whether participants’ descriptions of the pornography they had viewed met the objectionable criterion, especially given the prominence of aggressive behaviours in some easily accessible, free pornography (Bridges et al., 2010; Shor, 2019). To some, these aggressive behaviours may be interpreted as extreme cruelty or eroticised violence, but to others they may simply present as a display of consensual sexual practices by consenting adults. Assessing what participants’ described viewing would ultimately rely on my subjective appraisal of their description, undoubtedly influenced by my own position in relation to pornography.

In response to the committee’s concerns, I suggested it may be appropriate to simply warn against disclosures of the creation, or distribution, of objectionable pornography rather than avoiding all conversations entirely. I queried how these disclosures differed to other forms of research which discuss illegal behaviours, such as with people who use illicit drugs, or when people are asked about sex and have been found to have been sexually coercive. This comparison was rejected on the basis that people taking illicit drugs are harming themselves and no direct third-party harm is involved. I was asked to elaborate further about how my proposed management of these conversations was sufficient. I agreed that the continued viewing of objectionable material exacerbates third party harm; however, I questioned how useful a disclosure to police would be regarding the historical viewing of objectionable content. If a participant shared with me that they had previously viewed material which eroticised violence or sexualised animals, yet I had no knowledge of where it originated from, where it was located, or who the people/things were in the material, what benefit would this be to police?

Approval was eventually granted on the condition that I warned against disclosures of behaviour that contributed to the offline perpetration of harm. The committee’s stance around disclosures to police, however, made me feel anxious about other aspects of the research involved in my everyday life as a pornography scholar. While completing the research, I had obtained special approval to view pornography on my university computer. This made doing my research at work much simpler; however, the ethics review process caused me to be worried about the implications of inadvertently stumbling across objectionable content while using university systems, something that had occurred when researching on my own private computer at home. I was concerned that I may somehow be more closely policed by my own institution now that my research was on the ‘radar’ of the ethics committee.

Gendered concerns for researcher safety

Alongside concerns about the legality of the conversations in my research, the ethics committee expressed considerable concern about my personal safety. Concerns about researchers’ safety risks are likely very well-intentioned, but concerns for the safety of sex and sexuality researchers can be gendered in nature. Pilcher (2017) recalls being told she may ‘require a chaperone’ (p. xvi) when doing her research, for fear of the danger and risk that engaging in sex work research would entail. Relatedly, Hammond and Kingston (2014) report being asked whether a bodyguard would be available for research with male clients of sex workers, ‘or if there would be someone else sitting in the room when interviewing these “dangerous” men’ (p. 333). In my research, the location of interviews was identified as ‘clearly an issue’ in feedback from the committee, and I was asked to consider only using spaces that had suitable levels of privacy, but with immediate access to assistance if needed. I was also encouraged to approach my institution’s psychology department to host me for my interviews. The feedback went a step further, asking me to seriously consider having a second researcher present as a transcriber to protect me. The use of the word protect appeared to draw on stereotypical, gendered assumptions about the type of person who views pornography (men) and their perceived dangerousness. If I were only interviewing women about their engagement with pornography, would the same concerns about my physical safety be raised?

The irony in the committee’s anxiety about my physical safety is that pornography use by both men and women can be high (Smith et al., 2015), and young women’s experiences of gender-based harassment, abuse and violence are better considered ‘everyday’ experiences than exceptions. These everyday experiences mean that women routinely adopt strategic decisions to avoid experiences of violence and abuse, which, while freedom-limiting (Vera-Gray and Kelly, 2020), make them skilled interpreters of the world around them. Arguably, then, women’s lived experiences of everyday gendered violence and daily navigations of safety may position them as experts in assessing their own safety in research encounters with ‘dangerous’ male pornography viewers. However, in assessing the risks involved in my research, I felt that my identity as a young, female postgraduate assessment influenced the committee’s perceptions of risk associated with my project. Further, I felt the committee’s risk assessment of ‘me’ and my project largely ignored my own abilities to risk assess for myself, developed through years of daily safety work and navigation.

In responding to committee feedback, I strongly opposed the idea that a second researcher be present during interviews. The sensitive nature of the research, in conjunction with the presence of a third person, could restrict the success of participant recruitment and the types of stories told and heard during the interview process. Their presence would also upset the existing power dynamics in the researcher–researched relationship and skew the existing power imbalance further toward me as the researcher. Further, I felt that expecting a third person to be present for the interview neglected to consider the emotional impacts they may experience during the process. The emotionally involved nature of research is well documented (Dickson-Swift et al., 2008; emerald and Carpenter, 2015), and examining the emotional impacts of doing sensitive research encourages researchers to prepare for what they may experience. As McClelland (2017) points out,

asking participants to talk about their sexual lives often involves listening to stories of pleasure, as well as pain, violence, and sadness. We hear about things that surprise us, tap into our own pain, violence, and sadness, and what we hear may haunt us long after the interviews end. (p. 341)

Accumulatively, the challenges involved in obtaining ethical approval for this research made me question whether my ‘age and naivete’, as well as my gender, had in fact influenced the concerns the committee raised. As a young, cisgender, female postgraduate student, I wondered whether the concerns about managing illicit disclosures – particularly about sex – were paternalistic in nature, built upon a concern about my exposure to, and subsequent management of, distressing narratives and criminal disclosures. Further, I felt that these paternalistic worries also infused their concerns about my physical safety, which, compounded by my gender, made for a particularly challenging ethical review experience.

In criminology, we have long spoken of the police’s role as ‘gatekeepers’ to the criminal justice system (Jordan, 2004). They have the power to decide who is arrested, charged, and who receives discretion. Their almost exclusive decision-making abilities mean that some groups benefit from the use of police discretion, whereas others suffer greatly. Of course, their decision-making does not occur in a vacuum; it is reflective of wider societal forces and oppressions which often result in poor justice outcomes for marginalised groups. Ethics committees similarly function as gatekeepers to the research process and play an important role in deciding and regulating the types of knowledge that can be sought, who can seek to report it, and the circumstances through which such knowledge can be gathered.

Ethics committee members are not immune to endorsing moralistic and stereotypical assumptions about pornography and those who view it, and such risk-averse thinking can result in unique structural barriers to the successful completion of research not faced by other academics. In this vein, it is imperative that sex academics collectively share their strategies for tackling risk-averse committees in order to challenge the stifling of academic insights on stigmatised topics, and sex academics should welcome the opportunity to join ethics committees if offered the opportunity. Sex academic representation on ethics committees would help provide both an important counter-perspective when sensitive research projects present, but also enable the sharing of helpful insights from their own lived experiences of research that serves to build agency within other researchers and secure the continued contribution of knowledge in this space.

The implications of doing dirty work: Professional and personal challenges

As discussed earlier in this article, researchers of sex and sexuality commonly fear negative professional consequences as a result of their research. These fears mean that the future implications of embarking on dirty research projects can be important considerations, particularly for graduate students completing them without tenure, or institutional support (Jones, 2018; Sanders-McDonagh, 2014). Shortly after enrolling in my doctoral programme, I was introduced to a new postgraduate student in the department and asked to make them feel at home. When I told them about my research, they raised their eyebrows and asked, ‘what has criminology got to do with porn?’ At the time, I wondered that too. Criminology is a diverse discipline; however, critical criminological perspectives on contemporary adult pornography are lacking (DeKeseredy, 2015), despite its potential to contribute to experiences of both online and offline harms. While feeling marginalised as a sex researcher is not uncommon (Attwood, 2010; Pilcher, 2017), I struggled to find a ‘home’ within my discipline as I did not firmly side with either an anti-pornography or pro-pornography position. At times, exploring the pleasures of pornography felt beyond the realms of criminological inquiry. In the early stages, I felt that I needed to attend to the harms of pornography more strongly to enhance the validity of the research, and to achieve legitimacy within my discipline. While I now appreciate the importance and strength of adopting an approach which examines both the pleasures and pains of pornography, the ‘push’ to align myself with a position was strong.

In searching for my home within my discipline, I looked to conferences to present at that would be open to including a presentation on pornography. In these spaces, the uncertainty about my work, and the negative stigma associated with pornography was widely felt, almost as if researching pornography was ‘tantamount to the practice of it’ (Gabriel, 2017: 308). At one conference, my paper was included in a session on feminist literature and art, much to the shock of those attending the session. At another, male audience members audibly laughed and sniggered as I delivered my paper which discussed pornography and masturbation. I was later asked who I must have slept with to get funding for such a project. Such invasive and personal questioning reinforced the feeling that my work was regarded as ‘morally questionable, academically unsound and tainted by the pleasure supposedly inherent in its object’ (Gabriel, 2017: 312). Further, it reinforced existing concerns I had about my credibility as a respectable researcher, thereby reflecting how men’s sexualisation practices in the workplace are part of wider gendered power relations and work to diminish women’s power in these environments (Huysamen, 2020). Despite my best efforts to deliver my work in sanitised ways in the pursuit of academic legitimacy, these encounters stained the fabric of my doctoral journey. Unfortunately, these experiences form part of the everyday experiences of sex researchers, serving to both construct and demean the legitimacy of research in this domain (Pilcher, 2017).

Reflexive insights from others suggest that concerns about the professional impacts of engaging in sex research can be experienced beyond the ivory tower (Attwood, 2010; Hammond and Kingston, 2014; Israel, 2002), and the negative reactions and suspicion associated with my research were also felt there. As I pursued non-academic roles, I was encouraged by recruiters to remove all references to sex and pornography from my curriculum vitae and job applications, to not appear ‘deviant’ or, worse, to be presumed to be associated with the sex industry. Sex research is often claimed to be work that brings researchers more ‘enjoyment’ than other areas. As discussed by Fahs et al. (2017), the fun nature of sex research ‘is then consistently counterbalanced with trivializations, mockeries, and downgrading of the seriousness of the work that occurs both within and outside of academia’ (p. 506). The idea that sex research must be fun, exciting or titillating came through during a phone interview for a non-academic role in a large agency. During the interview, the recruiter joked that the work would be far too ‘boring’ for me to want to stick around for the long term. I asked what made them think that, to which they responded that the role would never be able to satisfy my need and interest for all things sex related. Given the negative perceptions and stigma associated with the study of pornography, it is perhaps unsurprising that I experienced feelings of marginalisation both within, and outside of, the ivory tower. These feelings contributed to a sense of anxiety and concern about whether my research was valid, whether it was ‘real’ and whether I was really a criminologist. One of the few places that made my research feel validated was during supervision meetings, where fears about my work not having a home in my discipline were diminished.

While the professional challenges I faced made completing my research tiresome, it was the personal challenges I encountered outside of fieldwork and academia that were the biggest obstacle in my dirty work journey. Fahs et al. (2017) contend that the personal and professional costs of engaging in critical feminist research on sex necessitate an examination of how researchers are individually impacted by the work that they do. As researchers doing ‘dirty’ projects, it is not just the lives of our participants that are under scrutiny; we inevitably become implicated in the research ourselves (Jones, 2018). For some, this entanglement can result in extremely stigmatising and life-threatening experiences outside of fieldwork (Javaid, 2020), and discussions that examine the interaction between the research context and the researcher’s wider life are important (Hammond and Kingston, 2014). It is to the personal consequences of doing pornography research that I now turn.

Prior to researching pornography, I had conducted research and taught on sexual violence as a postgraduate student. Much like Javaid (2020) recounts in his powerful autoethnographic account of his experiences as a sexual violence researcher, assumptions were made by others about why I chose to pursue this line of research. Numerous people seemed to be obsessed with knowing whether ‘it’ had happened to me, as if they deserved to know my reasons for engaging in sexual violence research. These early experiences meant that I approached the study of pornography with caution, knowing that my status as a pornography researcher would invite questions and, likely, assumptions. What I did not anticipate, however, was the sheer range of reactions I encountered outside of my research and how difficult they were to avoid.

Researching sex often invites questions about the researchers’ sexual interests. While these may initially come from a place of ‘curiosity and judgment’, they can result in assumptions being made about ‘one’s sexual proclivities’ (Irvine, 2014b: 40). These accompanying assumptions are frequent, and researchers’ sexual desires can also become the object of scrutiny (Thomas and Williams, 2016). I contend that this is likely a remarkably gendered experience, and speaks volumes about the way that women’s sexuality – and indeed femininity more generally – continues to be both constructed and policed in heteropatriarchal societies. Studying pornography inevitably invited questions from others – usually men – about my sexual interests, desires and preferences. It also seemed to signal that I must perform in pornography, and I often fielded questions about where my videos were found, or how much money I made from them. Further, presenting as a fat woman encouraged some to jokingly indicate I must be a ‘fetish’ performer. This overt sexualisation and objectification served to both highlight my own internalised anxieties about pornography and how being associated with the industry could diminish my credibility as a ‘respectable’ researcher, but also my fears of adopting a ‘whore’ identity and feeling the full weight of sexist double standards that see even ‘empowered’ women’s choices shunned when they cross the borders of ‘acceptable’ femininity and sexuality (Gill, 2008).

Beyond these assumptions, I often received hostile or aggressive responses – again, typically from men – whenever I spoke of pornography’s potential for harm. I was labelled ‘vanilla’ and called a ‘man hater’ or a ‘prude’ for ever mentioning that pornography could be harmful. Conversely, when I spoke about pornography’s pleasures, I was assumed to be a ‘dirty girl’ or the ‘type’ of girl that would be ‘up for anything’, which again left me feeling pressured to avoid taking up the ‘dirty girl’ label for fear of what it said about me as a woman. In many ways, the same sexual double standards that I had been tirelessly subjected to as a young woman were being reinforced, and amplified, because I researched pornography. No matter what I said about pornography, others – usually men – felt compelled to pass judgment and make assumptions about who I was and what my research said about me. At the same time, my personal discomfort with being sexualised was demonstrative of my pursuit of performing the respectable, right type of femininity and becoming the ‘right’ kind of researcher. Much like Huysamen (2020) notes in her reflexive overview of the interview as an erotic encounter, she recalls actively distancing herself from a ‘whore’ identity, which, in so doing, ‘actively reproduced the harmful Madonna/whore dichotomy of feminine sexuality that both continues to police and limit women’s sexualities and stigmatises sex workers’ (p. 385).

The constant assumptions about my sexual proclivities prompted me to engage in ‘closeting practices’ (Irvine, 2018: 18), in the hope of maintaining an element of control in my interactions with others, but also to avoid being labelled, and in turn, being scrutinised. I became reluctant to share or disclose the nature of my research to others, for fear of inciting stigmatising, inflammatory, or sexualised responses. When the topic arose, I tried occupying a middle ground, neglecting to share much about my own views on pornography or diverting conversations from the topic entirely. In essence, I was self-policing in the name of keeping others happy, but also to keep myself safe. Like Hammond and Kingston (2014), I began to identify myself as a scholar of gender and the media in some environments. In other environments, such as bars, I told people I worked for the tax department, a role as far removed from pornography scholarship as possible. Javaid (2020) suggests that controlling the level of information that we, as researchers, allow others to know about us and our work is an important aspect of self-care. He writes that

when associated with sensitive research, inside and outside of fieldwork, it is helpful if not life saving to control the level of information that one circulates to another in the midst of social interaction. To protect oneself, not only emotionally but also physically, one ought to prevent the stigma from looming large by withholding particular information about oneself. (p. 23)

I noticed that when men made these disclosures in front of their female partners, it often prompted them to place a hand on their partner’s thigh, while others left the venue entirely. It was if my perceived ‘sexpertise’ – a claim I resisted – suggested I may be a threat to the stability of their relationship. At first, I thought these small gestures were merely a result of my own anxieties about how I was perceived by others, but an incident in a woman’s bathroom confirmed my concerns. It was a typical night out, and a friend introduced me to a table of new people as the ‘Porn Queen’, inviting the usual flurry of sex-related questions. One man seemed particularly fascinated, providing a long, tiresome and sexually explicit account of his sexual preferences, fantasies, and his presumed capabilities at providing oral pleasure. I diverted the conversation away from sex numerous times and even moved to another part of the table, to which he followed to continue his tirade. Later that evening, I was accosted by his partner in the bathroom who yelled ‘how fucking dare you talk to my boyfriend like that, I know you want to fuck him, you’re such a slut!’

In the space of one evening, I had occupied the identity of a pornography researcher, a sex therapist, and a sexual threat, losing sight of my own identity in that moment. I constantly questioned whether straight, cisgender male researchers would recount similar experiences. Were they perceived as open doors for free sexual therapy? Would they be outed by their friends in social spaces? Were they perceived as ‘threats’ to couples? While a fleeting situational incident, it resides as a painful memory, a reminder of the very real consequences involved with conducting pornography scholarship.

So you want to be a sexademic?

Throughout this article, I have shared my experiences of doing a dirty research project across two key domains, the first being the challenge in securing approval to ‘do’ a dirty research project, and the second being the challenges of ‘doing’ dirty research in both professional and personal realms. It is with sadness that I acknowledge that some – if not many – of my experiences are likely painfully familiar for readers and researchers of sex and sexuality. With such painful reminders, then, it is important that sex and sexuality researchers consider sharing strategies and tips for minimising the impact of the pitfalls that may be encountered during what can be tumultuous research journeys. While this article is incapable of offering solutions to all of the challenges or problems that dirty research areas may invoke, I do want to offer some practical suggestions that may help build the capacity of other early career scholars embarking on similar research journeys.

My first piece of advice is to reach out to other scholars working in a similar field and find your spiritual ‘home’. Of the scholars whose work you admire, approach them and let them know about you, your work, and ask about their experiences. In hindsight, I wish I had reached out to academics studying pornography specifically to ask about their experiences rather than waiting to read the reflexive research insights that inevitably end up being published in journals such as Sexualities. I would also encourage early career researchers to use social media platforms such as Twitter to build and establish online communities with those involved in similar research. The network of scholars I have met via Twitter makes me feel as if I have finally found my ‘home’ among a community of critical, caring and passionate sex and sexuality scholars. The added benefit of having this critical community online means I also find out about conferences that are less likely to result in the negative conference experiences that I have shared in this article.

My second piece of advice is to ensure that you have robust supervisory support and to build relationships with your supervisors that allow for the sharing of the emotional challenges involved in doing sex and sexuality research. Whilst I was lucky to have strong institutional support for my project, I am acutely aware that this is not the case for all early career researchers, which makes it even more important to have strong relationships with supervisors. Closely related to this would be to ask your supervisors to work closely with you in preparing your application for ethical clearance, and to leave much more time aside for obtaining it than first anticipated. Be sure to read widely about others’ experiences in navigating the ethical review process so you not only prepare yourself for the hurdles you may have to jump, but also so you can pre-empt ethics committees’ concerns and suggest solutions in your application. This may signal to a risk-averse committee that you are knowledgeable and capable of tackling the challenges that may arise (you are!) and encourage them to view your application with less risky lenses.

Finally, I encourage early career researchers doing dirty work to consider the possibility of engaging in some form of regular supervision that is separate to supervisory relationships. During my doctoral project, I met with my doctor on a monthly basis for clinical debriefing. These meetings functioned as a safe outlet for discussing the challenges I was facing both personally and professionally. Thankfully, cost was not a barrier to accessing this support at my institution as healthcare was included in our student fees, and I am acutely aware that my experience at my institution is not reflective of all. However, if early career scholars were to pre-empt committee concerns about our emotional safety by building clinical debriefing and/or supervision into our applications, the obligation for our institutions to provide funding for such debriefing could be a potential outcome of the ethics clearance process.

I suspect such blue sky thinking likely lies in the realm of optimism over reality; however, it raises wider questions about whether institutions have an obligation to support students engaging in emotionally challenging projects beyond their supervisory relationships. In turn, I invite those of us working in dirty research areas to collectively consider how we can enhance student safety in dirty research projects and to discuss strategies that will assist them in overcoming the structural hurdles that the ethics review clearance process may present.

Concluding comments

This article has examined the variety of challenges I faced as I completed my doctoral research on pornography in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Through reflexively exploring these experiences, I have demonstrated how doing research on pornography can be an arduous process, plagued with challenges and complexities at the institutional level. Further, conducting research on pornography can result in researchers experiencing a range of professional and personal challenges as a result of their inquiry. Ultimately, those doing research on pornography are doing dirty work, and by association, researchers are vulnerable to being labelled dirty workers.

In this article, I explored the challenges I encountered in obtaining ethical approval for my research. Pornography’s association with deviance may contribute to the field being viewed suspiciously by those responsible for assessing researcher risk, encouraging closer scrutiny of projects at the ethical approval stage and more cautious approaches to research methods. In my experience, these concerns may be heightened when research that is perceived as risky is proposed by young, female, postgraduate students. I contend that young women may be more susceptible to being considered naïve, passive or vulnerable by ethics committees, thereby presenting additional barriers as they undertake such projects. In turn, these additional barriers can have the power to shape the types of knowledge that can be produced, and by whom. In this article, I have made some suggestions that early career researchers may wish to consider prior to embarking on dirty research projects, and I invite sex academics more generally to consider sharing their strategic insights of navigating ethical review clearance to better assist other scholars going forward.

My experiences conducting pornography research further highlight the importance of researchers providing reflexive insights that pay attention to the professional and personal impacts that engaging in dirty work may pose, and how gender plays a considerable role in these experiences. When researching stigmatised topics like pornography, researchers risk experiencing stigma from both within the academy and beyond (Hammond and Kingston, 2014). Researchers’ identities can feel permanently fused to their own personal identities, often making identity and cautionary management strategies necessary tools in our research toolbelts. Therefore, the importance of reflexive insights should not be overstated. When sex and sexuality researchers provide brave reviews of their research journeys, they help to illuminate the consequences of doing dirty work, or detail how they survived them. This awareness raising may provide a sense of shared understanding or community for those of us researching in the sex and sexuality space, but also helps new scholars feel more prepared as they commence risky research projects.

Through my experiences, I have grown to accept that disclosing my research area can inspire heated debates, controversies and chaos in some social situations. I have become comfortable with knowing that experiencing negative reactions to my research is more typical than atypical. However, I firmly believe that examining contemporary adult pornography remains an area of critical concern for criminology researchers, and I continue to be interested in dirty research topics irrespective of the challenges they bring. I am privileged to now be in a lecturing role in the department that supported me through my doctoral research. I am grateful that I can share my knowledge and insights with students in my discipline, and I hope to stimulate student interests in these areas. For those who wish to undertake similar projects in the future, I intend to use my experiences to ensure that they are well supported – academically, professionally, emotionally – as they navigate such challenging research terrain.