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Paper short abstract

For one of my interlocutors, being a gay Muslim was a “joke.” And there I was, sitting across from him, wearing my insult: gay-Muslim. How can autoethnography, while offering comfort to others, become a source of discomfort for the anthropologist—and an analytical opportunity?

Paper long abstract

This paper examines autoethnographic discomfort both as an obstacle and as a method. I reflect on my position as a gay Muslim Syrian conducting research among queer Syrians in Berlin, where religion is often dismissed as incompatible with queerness. Across contexts, my identity is repeatedly fragmented: in Syria, I am read only as Muslim and my queerness is erased; in Berlin, I am seen only as gay and my faith is ridiculed. But I am both.

Remembering the fieldwork, I found myself confronted with the question: Should I leave Islam to be gay—and not a joke to laugh at? I was listening as an outsider, trying to observe and understand. Yet as an insider, there I was: a gay Muslim man, not a “joke.” Listening later to the recording, I could hear the agitation in my own voice. These moments illustrate how autoethnography, while often framed as comforting or empowering—especially for interlocutors—can itself be deeply unsettling for the researcher. Discomfort does not stay in the field—it travels home, into the body, memory, and writing.

This unease, however, becomes analytically productive. It exposes the limits of queer frameworks, the conditionality of belonging, and the moral hierarchies shaping migrant queer spaces. By linking autoethnographic vignettes with interlocutors’ narratives, I treat discomfort not as a personal injury but as a site for ethical and methodological reflection on self-protection, positionality, and fieldwork practice. Confronting discomfort, rather than silencing it, becomes a way for anthropology to flourish.