Queer(ing) communication in research relationships : a conversation about subjectivities, methodologies and ethics

In this chapter we critically reflect on the use of interview-based research methods with sexual minority communities and participants - such as in-depth interviews, focus groups and ethnographic conversations - seeking to interrogate the 'queerness' of communication in these research relationships. Queerness is used here both to represent lesbian and gay lives as they exist outside of normative heterosexuality, and how communication works across and subverts subjective binaries in research relationships, such as insider/outsider. Moreover, the notion of queer asserts the multiplicity and fluidity of sexual subjectivities. Our discussion emphasises how sexual subject positions proliferate through the inflection of sexuality and gender with race, ethnicity, postcoloniality, culture, class and life­ course changes-entanglements which have a powerful resonance in the empirical context of our work 'down under' in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. We argue that this fracturing of sexual subjectivities has critical implications for communication in interview-based research with sexual minorities.