This essay is based on a cyber autoethnographic research I have conducted on Hornet, a geosocial networking application (GNA) created for gay and bisexual men, without establishing a clear-cut distinction between my identity as a user and that as a researcher. Here I discuss how feminist and queer autoethnography in and of cybercultures can refrain from objectifying or exploiting others by enabling research relations that (a) are not hierarchical, (b) disturb the researcher/researched binary, (c) embrace the impersonal ethics of cruising, and (d) do not shy away from recognizing the role of the researcher’s body unlike the conventional (masculine) researcher who allegedly has no emotional, erotic, or bodily presence within the field or in the research. I also address cruising as a queer autoethnographic method, while uncovering the methodological and ethical implications of doing autoethnography in a cyberfield that is libidinally invested.
AtukT. (2019). Comrades-in-[Each Other’s]-Arms: Homosociality, Masculinity and Effeminacy in the Turkish Army. Men and Masculinitiesdoi:10.1177/1097184X19866874
3.
AndersonL. (2006). Analytic Autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 373–395.doi:10.1177/0891241605280449
4.
BainA. L.NashC. J. (2006). Undressing the researcher: Feminism, embodiment and sexuality at a queer bathhouse event. Area, 38(1), 99–106.doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2006.00663.x
5.
BaradK. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
6.
BereketT.AdamB. D. (2006). The emergence of gay identities in contemporary turkey. Sexualities, 9(2), 131–151.doi:10.1177/1363460706063116
7.
BersaniL. (2002). Sociability and cruising. Umbr(a): Sameness, 1, 9–23.
8.
BochnerA. P.EllisC. (1996). Talking over ethnography. InEllisC.BochnerA. P. (Eds.), Composing ethnography: Alternative forms of qualitative writing (pp.13–45). Alta Mira Press.
9.
BoellstorffT. (2008). Coming of age in Second Life: An anthropologist explores the virtually human. Princeton University Press.
10.
BoellstorffT. (2010). Queer techne: Two theses on methodology and queer studies. InBrowneK.NashC. J. (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies: Intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp.215–230). Ashgate.
11.
BoellstorffT. (2012). Rethinking digital anthropology. InHorstH. A.MillerD. (Eds.), Digital anthropology (pp.39–60). Berg.
12.
BoellstorffT.NardiB.PearceC.TaylorT. L. (2012). Ethnography and virtual worlds: a handbook of method. Princeton University Press.
13.
BrowneK.NashC. J.. (Eds.). (2010). Queer methods and methodologies: Intersecting queer theories and social science research. Ashgate.
14.
CampbellJ. E. (2004). Getting it on online: Cyberspace, gay male sexuality, and embodied identity (1st ed). Routledge.
15.
DahlU. (2010). Femme on Femme: Reflections on Collaborative Methods and Queer Femme-inist Ethnography. InBrowneK.NashC. J. (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies: intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp.143–166). Ashgate.
16.
DavisA. (2016). Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. InBaratF. (Ed.),. Haymarket Books.
17.
DeanT. (2009). Unlimited intimacy: Reflections on the subculture of barebacking. University Of Chicago Press.
18.
DugganL. (2004). The twilight of equality: Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy. Beacon Press.
19.
EllisC. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Alta Mira Press.
20.
EnglandK. (1994). Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research. Critical Geographies: A collection of readings, 241–256.
21.
FoucaultM. (1990). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. (R. Hurley, Trans.; Reissue ed). Vintage.
22.
GajjalaR. (2002). An Interrupted Postcolonial/Feminist Cyberethnography: Complicity and Resistance in the “Cyberfield”. Feminist Media Studies, 2(2), 177–193.doi:10.1080/14680770220150854
23.
GrovC.BreslowA. S.NewcombM. E.RosenbergerJ. G.BauermeisterJ. A. (2014). Gay and bisexual men’s use of the Internet: Research from the 1990s through 2013. The Journal of Sex Research, 51(4), 390–409.doi:10.1080/00224499.2013.871626http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24754360
24.
HarawayD. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599.doi:10.2307/3178066
25.
HillS. (2004). Doing Collaborative research: Doing what feels right and makes sense. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 7(2), 109–126.doi:10.1080/13645570210124856
26.
HineC. (2000). Virtual ethnography. SAGE.
27.
JonesS. H.AdamsT. E. (2010). Autoethnography is a queer method. InBrowneK.NashC. J. (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies: intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp.195–214). Ashgate.
28.
KulickD. (1995). The sexual life of anhtropologists: Erotic subjectivity and ethnographic work. InKulickD.WillsonM. (Eds.), Taboo: Sex, identity and erotic subjectivity in anthropological fieldwork (pp.1–28). Routledge.
29.
McGlottenS. (2013). Virtual intimacies: Media, affect, and queer sociality. State University of New York Press.
30.
MossP. (2002). Feminist geography in practice: Research and methods. Oxford.
31.
PlummerK. (2003). Queers, bodies and postmodern sexualities: A note on revisiting the “sexual” in symbolic interactionism. Qualitative Sociology, 26(4), 515–530.doi:10.1023/B:QUAS.0000005055.16811.1c
32.
ReynoldsR. (2008). Imagining gay life in the Internet age or why I don’t Internet date. International Journal of Emerging Technologies & Society, 6(1), 2–13.
33.
RoachT. (2015). Becoming fungible: Queer intimacies in social media. Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, 23(2), 55–87.
34.
RookeA. (2010). Queer in the Field: On Emotions, Temporality and Performativity in Ethnography. InBrowneK.NashC. J. (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies: Intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp.25–40). Ashgate.
35.
RoseG. (1997). Situating knowledges: Positionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 21(3), 305–320.doi:10.1191/030913297673302122
36.
RybasN.GajjalaR. (2007). Developing cyberethnographic research methods for understanding digitally mediated identities. InForum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 8). http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/282.
37.
StanleyL.WiseS. (1993). Breaking out again: Feminist ontology and epistemology (2nd ed.). Routledge.
38.
WarnerM. (1993). Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory. University of Minnesota Press.
39.
WeeksJ. (2007). The world we have won: The remaking of erotic and intimate life. Routledge.
