Cruising in the Research Field: Queer, Feminist, and Cyber Autoethnography

Abstract

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.