Men can change: transformation, agency, ethics and closure during critical dialogue in interviews

What is it about?

Some male interviewees encounter difficulties when they try to express their emotions and overcome anti-feminist positions that transform the research setting into places where hyper-masculinities are reproduced. This research finds that critical dialogue is a persuasive tool interviewers can employ to challenge their participants to empathize with perspectives that contest and confront gendered violence, institutional coercion, and misogyny. Drawing on eight interviews I conducted with male security officers (all former colleagues of the author) who engaged in healthcare violence against male and female psychiatric patients at two hospitals in Ottawa, Canada, I discovered that dissent and the testament of past sufferings inspires people to reconsider their marginalizing standpoints, and helps participants and researchers who have experienced trauma before and during the research process to cope with their emotional suffering and find closure. This approach may encounter ethical problems such as researcher/participant re-victimization and distress, which may be resolved through debriefing exercises, and displays of empathy, compassion, non-judgement, and friendship.

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