The Many Difficulties of Feminist Research

If our job as feminist researchers was not already difficult enough, I believe that this week’s readings further complicated it. I found Halse and Honey’s narrative of how careful they were in being sensitive to their research participant’s needs inspiring. It was shocking to me how much the research board restricted them from putting into place all the protections they wanted to protect their research subjects. I was most inspired when Halse and Honey stated how easy it would have been if they just ignored the questions that troubled them; that their research project only stalled when they tried to create a more morally acceptable description of their population. The question I kept coming back to when reflecting on this article was what would the academy look like if all researchers were as ethically careful as Halse and Honey? I believe the academy would be a steward of social justice and not seen as an institution full of people who colonize knowledge for themselves. In the end, I was disappointed that Halse and Honey compromised on a few key points such as allowing the clinic’s doctors to be involved in the research, I wish they did not have to compromise but I also recognize that some times we just need to complete our research and avoid controversy that would stall us.

            Kirsch offered us a very interesting critique of feminist research and suggested ways we can make it better. I agree that in many instances researchers can get to close to their research subject and then leave them high and dry when the project is over. I always think of the scene in Rent when Mark is filming a homeless woman and the woman tells him that she does not want him to make a name for himself on her. I always think of this scene as an example of bad research where the researcher uses his subject for himself. I believe that as feminists our goal always needs to be improving people’s lives as an outcome of our research. I find Kirsch suggestion of allowing research subjects to comment on research in progress to be quite fascinating and would love to see a study where that was done. I also agreed with the author that we should expose undergrads to research but also believe as she states we need to be careful. When researching we are playing with people’s emotions in some sense and we need to make sure anyone we ask to do that is properly trained.