Researching While Trans: Being Clocked and Cooling Cistress

Abstract

In this article, I investigate how predominantly cisgender and straight participants of a university LGBT Ally Training program perceived transgender topics. As a trans woman, my positionality and gendered embodiment shaped my research process—depending on whether or not I was perceived as trans. Drawing on 21 interviews with 12 training participants and the training instructor, plus 12 hours of ethnographic observations of 4 Ally Trainings, I show the interactive nature of the research process and how I navigated what I call participant distress. Participant distress manifested due to participant anxiety regarding how I, a trans researcher, perceived their responses. I analyze distress through the lens of Goffman, and offer cistress as a more specific interactive process of disrupting cisnormative statements that results in guilt or anger.