Paper short abstract:

As a PhD candidate conducting research with male sex workers in London ON, I participated in planning & presenting at a forum on the sex industry for a grassroots community group. Complicating ideals of collaboration, I consider my positionalities as I attempted to reach a public audience.

Paper long abstract:

For decades, those who sell sex have been voicing their concerns about research performed on their communities, & both those who sell sex and academics express concern over the power imbalance researchers have over study participants (Bowen & O'Doherty 2014). One solution to this power imbalance has been to work with or give representative power back into the hands of the researched. Unfortunately, the discourses produced, regardless of the methods, are often repetitively altered, reinterpreted, & declared as more "authentic" & cooperative in an effort to legitimize the research process (& appear less exploitative). In other words, as I am implicated in a position of dominance, while at the same time I attempt to shift "the nexus of power" (Heron 2007, 151) I need to counter current limitations & be held accountable to the participants in my study some other way. If academically my researching "with" those who sell sex is limited, then other opportunities for engagement & self-representation are presumably important & necessary as part of the philosophy of participatory research. I took my involvement with local community politics as an opportunity to take advantage of my privilege in being approached as a knowledge producer (the valued academic) & hopefully act as catalyst for more impactful & participatory advocacy work with some of the men I interviewed in my research. Though the conversation was intended to be a space of equality, formatted to influence a dialogue that could reduce disinformation, this was not as straight-forward as I originally thought.