ABSTRACT
The ethical constraints that govern human research assume that research involving questions of sexuality is sensitive terrain and must be navigated with caution. Ethical review boards are already nervous about researcher/researched intimacies, but field relationships mediated through the lens of sexuality are made all the more ethically volatile when situated within an adult-researcher/youth-researched context. Institutional and societal hetero normativities intersect with the formal research procedures of human research ethics committees Australia's reference for human research ethics is detailed in the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. The National Ethics Application Form (NEAF) stipulates the necessity to outline in detail how the researcher will manage familiarity with research participants, and what the researcher will do to maintain appropriate distance and objectivity. As Talburt and Rasmussen admit, certain paradoxes, though we try to resist, are pervasive within queer research'.
