‘Razors in the Sand’: Witnessing,Engaging,and Protecting One Another in Threatening Times

Morning in St Ives, July 2014

Kitrina, James and I walk along the harbourside of St Ives, Cornwall, in the early morning sun. At one time, this would have seemed to be a town full of fisherman. Later, it might have seemed to be a town full of artists. Both those populations are still present. But if you were to visit in summertime you’d likely come away with the impression that this is now a town full of tourists. From all over the UK and from overseas too – Germany, Holland, and Belgium especially. The tourist industry plays an important part in floating Cornwall’s boat.

James and I hold hands as the three of us walk. There was a time that I could not have even imagined doing this. Especially in a small town or village in the southwest of England. Such a simple and harmless act. How could it have ever felt risky, dangerous, unwise? But even in London – such a cosmopolitan and diverse urban centre – insults and obscenities had sometimes flown when I held hands with a boyfriend. Many of us had similar experiences, didn’t we? Some experienced much worse. But now, in 2014, I feel no fear holding hands with James – even here.

Yet some people look. Even now, two men holding hands in public is far from routine. It is not run of the mill. But in 2014, those who look do so with kindness. Some make eye contact. Offer a warm smile. Almost an exaggerated smile. Like how I too might find myself smiling when I see a same-sex or mixed-race couple holding hands in my neighbourhood. Trying to compensate, perhaps, for the wrongs of the past. At these times, I feel … warmth … a sense of safety … pride. I feel happy to know that where I am, where I live, where I visit, where I work, have become safe and welcoming places to sexual diversity.

Misguided

In 2016 I wrote a research paper titled ‘Throughness’: A Story About Songwriting as Auto/Ethnography. It explores songwriting and music making within the context of family, trauma, and queer identities. The paper was published in Qualitative Inquiry (Carless, 2018). In it, I said:

The toxic history of homophobia in England (and elsewhere of course) through much of the twentieth century portrayed gay men as ‘perverts’ or ‘child molesters’ and as being unsuitable parents or teachers. Thankfully, in the United Kingdom and many other countries, these prejudices have been assigned to the past. (p. 231)

But over the course of 2025, I have begun to fear that the assuredness expressed in the second sentence of this excerpt was misguided.

Letter to a Boyfriend

On 6^th May 2014, 38 days after the first same-sex marriages took place in the UK, I wrote a song. It took the form of a letter to my boyfriend at the time. The lyrics go:

I believe the words that you conceal

I can hear through the touch you offer me

All the pain, all the doubt

All we’re still to figure out

Hold me now

Won’t you take me now?

From this island I call ‘me’

Some kind of prison, some kind of dream

The damage’s done, the die is cast

The future becomes the past

That’s what they say – that it’s too late

Let us try, let us hope

To breathe their poison out

Walk with me, won’t you walk with me

Through this land that’s now our own

Take this heart and make it whole

I am free, I am bound

I am lost and I am found

I am not you and you’re not me

So let us try, let us hope

To break the distance down

Hold me

And in this shared reality

Maybe we can prosper, maybe we can breathe ¹

Later that year I recorded the song with a sparse arrangement of two electric guitar parts, bass, and vocal. A few years later, I produced a music video to accompany the song and posted it on YouTube (Carless, 2024). The song still feels relevant today. I think of it as a prayer, a hope, an articulation of something that we – together – must will into being.

The Battle Was Over … Wasn’t It?

By the time I wrote the Throughness paper (Carless, 2018), I had begun to wonder if my autoethnographic inquiries into same-sex attraction were still necessary. Things seemed – things were – so much better in so many ways for gay and bisexual people in the UK. Better than they had been, at least. Equal marriage was a reality. Employment rights and workplace security had improved. Celebrities, even some politicians, were coming out. Lots of them. In 2016, was my research still needed?

I told myself that, yes, there clearly were still problems. In the UK, within some sections of society, things might have been OK. But many other countries – African, Middle Eastern, and some Asian nations, for example – homophobia remains rife and discrimination on the basis of sexual identity is commonplace. People in some of these nations risk arrest and imprisonment ‘just’ for kissing or holding their partner’s hand in public. For them, coming out publicly remains a very risky business. It threatens your safety, your employment prospects, your liberty, your family relationships, and more.

I reminded myself that problems still existed within some sections of the UK too. Our urban centres may have become more open, enlightened places where freedom, safety, and opportunities had moved towards equality. But small towns, rural areas, and particular neighbourhoods still harboured homophobia communicated in ways that might discourage you from revealing yourself.

So, too, in my professional backyard. In men’s sport, heterosexuality appeared to still rule the roost. Out gay or bisexual men were a rare exception to the unwritten rule of heterosexuality. Welsh rugby union player Gareth Thomas hit the headlines in a big way when he came out as gay in 2009. The British diver Tom Daley came out publicly in December 2013 via a YouTube video titled Something I want to say… It garnered 13 million views and made the front page of several national newspapers. Not a single men’s professional soccer player in the UK had come out at this time. This is still the case. In 2025. It was these cultures and subcultures that I focussed on in my autoethnographic writing, music making, and performance (e.g., Carless, 2010, 2012, 2021, 2023; Douglas & Carless, 2015). Here, same-sex attraction among men remained a critical and contested issue.

Sensitised

Over the years we’ve been working together I’ve come to expect David to notice things that relate to and affect the gay community, and to individuals and relationships that break stereotypes. I feel, over time, with exposure to David sharing his experiences of same-sex attraction – not just in stories, songs and films but also by witnessing the kinds of events he recounts above – that I have been sensitised to become more aware of these issues and notice things. But possibly in a different way to him.

Morning Calm, September 25^th 2025

I’m scrolling through BBC News Online from bed early in the morning. I do that after looking at the weather report, checking the surf forecast, and of course, after having made coffee. There’s usually a photo and a write up and I randomly click through stories hitting our headlines. Midway down the page a photo and headline jump out. I read that an Australian film to be released in China has been digitally altered to make a same-sex couple appear to be a heterosexual couple. A female face, for example, replaces one of the male faces and red lipstick is painted on to this face. I interrogate the photo. It’s also reported that other references to same-sex relationships in the film were removed. I read on, surprised, annoyed, disappointed concerned for what next? I can’t believe they would do that! Digitally alter someone’s gender after the film has been made.

But what do I do with this news? My first thought, having read the piece, is to share it with David. However, I’m also aware that such a story, interesting though it may be to him, could undermine a calm morning on holiday by the sea. A calm that he has been working hard to reinstate in his life. What each of us is able to take onboard differs. I’ve learned (and am still learning) that what I experience as excitement and a desire to share might be received as threat, an unwelcome intrusion for an already overloaded nervous system. I pause and consider. I decide to stay silent on the issue and put my phone away. But when do items of news – this very risky business – become something we need to know, to share, to talk about? And how do we balance that with a sensitivity and respect for another’s calm, peace, stability … mental health? How might we weigh the consequences that being exposed to yet another item of bad news might have for someone else?

Tolerance, Three Weeks Later

I’m in the car listening to BBC Radio 4. It’s been an interesting listen so far with Open Country at 3.00pm reporting on trees, followed by Word of Mouth at 3.30pm with Gruffalo author Michael Rosen talking about reading, writing and listening. That’s followed by Rethink at 4.00pm and Inside Science at 4.30pm. It’s a long drive and my thoughts, like the meandering bends in the road, drift in and out of the programmes as other issues and thoughts intrude or grab my attention.

‘This week’, the presenter of Inside Science (BBC Radio 4, 2025a) says, jolting me out of my inner thoughts, ‘we are exploring if embryos made from skin cells are the future of fertility treatment’. I’m not particularly interested in embryos or fertility and only partly register the conversation and how some researchers have been manipulating DNA taken from human skin cells and then fertilising them with sperm. At the same time, I am aware of the conversation on some level.

‘Why do you do this work?’ asks the presenter towards the end of the interview in her last question to the two ‘experts’. I tune in again. The first guest talks about how interesting this field is. I can’t help being judgemental. It all sounds very self-serving: doing it because it is ‘interesting.’ The second guest begins in a similar tone but then makes an unexpected turn:

‘On a personal level’, she says, ‘I’m very interested in the queer reproduction angle … the capacity for same sex couples to have children through IVF and IVG would completely change the fabric of society and would make being queer simply a form of infertility and more tolerated’. Suddenly I’m attending more. What did she say? Can I replay that bit? My first thought (again) is to share this with David. Coincidentally, he is near the end of a 4-year research council funded project exploring online sperm donation (see Turner-Moore et al., 2025). Sometimes, he talks to me about the project. I want him to hear this conversation and what is happening, and to know there are people in this field of science who care about same-sex couples and tolerance. That it has personal meaning to them and that they are open about this fact is encouraging. As autoethnographers, we often ask ourselves the question: Why do we do this work? Helping to create a kinder, more tolerant and understanding society may be one of the answers we come up with.

Humanity and Kindness, October 18^th 2025

The Vale of Rheidol Railway in Aberystwyth, Wales is the location for this week’s Any Questions (BBC Radio 4, 2025b), another BBC Radio 4 programme. The programme is rooted in politics and guests are typically drawn from different political parties, audience members from the local community. This week, it being Wales, there is the Conservative Senedd Deputy First Minister of Wales on the panel along with a Plaid Cymru MP and Reform UK party member. Their role is to respond to questions put to them by the audience.

I’m cleaning, so again, only half listening to the conversation. The first question comes from an audience member with a thick Welsh accent who asks:

‘Should politicians override the police?’

I don’t recognise the voices of the politicians as the first to respond gives his opinion. He thinks ‘No’. Then another responds, followed by a female member of the panel. Then, they all begin to disagree, voices get louder, panellists speak over one another, it all begins to sound disrespectful, chaotic and aggressive.

‘Excuse me!’ says the woman [Ann Davies] from Plaid Cymru, refusing to be silenced by the men. ‘I didn’t talk over you, let me speak!’ It goes quiet.

‘This is not right’, she begins, ‘the hate messages that are coming out against everybody. If you happen to be different, if you happen to be a Jew, a Palestinian, if you happen to be slightly different, if you happen to be gay, if you happen to be trans, everybody is not treating each other with humanity, and we have to go back to the basic thing with treating each other with humanity and kindness. I’ve had enough of this nonsense!’ The audience applaud, and I think, yes. Someone standing up for humanity and kindness.

Everyday Entanglements

Our work, our research, and the autoethnographies we create are situated in these everyday entanglements, as Norman Denzin knew when he wrote, ‘We are our own subjects. How our subjectivity becomes entangled in the lives of others is and has aways been our topic’ (Denzin, 1997, p. 27). While David and I, of course, see our everyday entanglements through different lenses, we are both nonetheless entangled: in each other’s lives; in the lives of others; in ways that inform, challenge and sensitise us to things that we may have (earlier in our lives) missed.

Put another way, when we first met, the wellbeing of gay, bisexual, queer, and trans people did not – on the face of it at least – impact my body. In contrast, sexism, misogyny, rape, grooming, along with constraints in women’s careers, glass ceilings, lower pay and unequal employment rights, maternity rights, women’s reproductive and sexual health, access to contraception, equity for women and girls (and so on) made up the soup I’ve been drowning in. I didn’t need to be shown this. It was played out daily. Although I don’t live in the USA, the overturning of the 1973 Roe V Wade ruling was a shock of seismic proportion felt in many countries outside the USA. In my own research, the ethical and moral challenges raised, and what I (or ‘we’ academics) might, should, ought to do about these issues, have sometimes been too much for me, too, threatening my mental health, stealing my peace. I have learnt from – and been affected by – not only what David writes, performs, sings and publishes, but also when I witness him being impacted by the kinds of issues we have discussed here. Issues that likely affect anyone outside of a narrow White, heterosexual, male cis-gender, able-bodied, economically privileged demarcation. He too has learnt – and been affected – through encountering the kinds of issues that have affected me and my health. One example is embodied in a song he wrote following my PhD viva. It is titled Razors in the Sand.

Razors in the Sand, April 16^th 2004

You take a long and lonely journey

Notes and colours in your mind

Searching for the high road

Sometimes falling by the side

But these days it’s no wonder

There’s razors hidden in the sand

When you’re lying in the gutter

The stars are hard to understand

It all reduces to one moment

As I watch you breaking down

For a minute there I doubted

If you were coming back around

When it seems impossible any dream will do

If it takes a miracle, we’ll get through

These days I often wonder

About razors in the sand

Maybe we’re lying in gutter

With stars we’ll never understand

With stars we’ll never understand ²

Collaborative Qualitative Inquiries: Some Final Reflections

An important thread running across our collaborative qualitative inquiries, as well as our friendship, is that through dialogue, through years of walking, listening, writing, and sharing, we have come to feel part of – invested in – each other’s entanglements in ways that we previously had not. Arthur Frank (2010) reminds us that when two people come from different positions dialogue can open-up in ways that are not possible when two people come from the same position. Through dialogue, we are not trying to be each other, or to change each other, but instead to respect our differences as we allow ourselves to be sensitised to what each of us faces in daily life. Often, this day-to-day ‘risky business’ is the material of our inquiries. In doing this work, collaboration entails caring for each other. Sometimes, it might mean covering for each other, taking on the other’s load should it become too heavy. Occasionally, it requires carrying each other, to take the other’s body-being on, when personal risk materialises as all-too-real. It is in these ways that we keep the collective boat afloat while one of us takes the time needed to rest, recover, recharge, rebuild. The gift of time to heal from damage done, injury sustained.

In terms of how autoethnography might help us carry the weight of grief, injustice, or despair while still gesturing toward healing futures, we take heart from the spaces and opportunities available to us, both in conferences and in print. We count ourselves fortunate to experience within the autoethnography community a quality of response, forms of engagement, and depths of relationship that we have found to be rare in academic culture. Perhaps the current prioritisation of performance outcomes within universities inhibits us from taking time necessary – making the investments that are required – to engage with each other in healthier ways? Arguments have been forwarded that this is the case (e.g., Berg & Seeber, 2016). In contrast, this Special Interest Group offers a different way of being, demonstrated by this special issue. Here, our work is shared among a supportive and caring community that we are privileged to feel part of. This excerpt from the editorial team’s review of an earlier version of this paper demonstrates this in action:

Your manuscript is generative, gentle, and powerful all at once. Please read these questions and suggestions as invitations to bring some of your ideas into stronger relief given the themes of the special issue and also our desire to understand your ideas more fully. (Autoethnography SIG Team, personal communication, 2025)

Here, in a few words, we are gifted an informed, insightful, and critical response to our work, which is at the same time generous, caring, and kind.

The International Conference of Autoethnography and International Symposium of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry also continue to do important work in this regard. Both communities imagine and embody alternative narrative maps for how we might be with each other, in and through our autoethnographic research. A further example, for us, arose through our keynote film at the Critical Autoethnography Conference (Douglas & Carless, 2021a). In the wake of COVID-19, we invited delegates to send us video and audio recordings of themselves singing one of our co-written songs, Surrounded by Ghosts. From these recordings, we produced a collaborative version of the song along with an accompanying music video hosted on YouTube (Douglas & Carless, 2021b). These three minutes embody an offering of inclusion, community, and connection … across time and space … created in a time of great separation. Something important happens through these reimagined ways of collaborating and relating. And whatever it is that happens redistributes the capacity to keep doing the work. We share each other’s energy, resistance, strength, and resources. And we are empowered keep going.

As autoethnographers, and as critical qualitative researchers, we recognise our role as advocates: calling out wrongs, speaking up about discrimination, challenging injustice (e.g., Douglas & Carless, 2025). This is important work. Perhaps now more than ever. But if we are to sustain it, we must first secure our own oxygen masks. And then each other’s. We cannot continue in this work without attending to these tasks. Sometimes, securing an oxygen mask might entail a pause in – or temporary retreat from – the work. More often, it entails doing the work in a different way. Important for us is to nurture joy, safety, and celebration alongside critical engagement. The two sides need to co-exist. We aim to find and maintain a balance. A both/and orientation is required, rather than either/or. This is not an easy feat.

It is here that we have found multimedia arts-based forms of inquiry to offer valuable possibilities. The simultaneous combination of (for example) words, moving image, sound, and music gifts us an uplift while we are doing gritty, critical work. Engaging in these aesthetic forms opens channels for joy and pleasure, alongside activism and critique. Humour can co-exist with sorrow. A sense of safety alongside memories of trauma.

Playing music together – with and for each other – has been one way we have embodied this sustained practice over the past 25 years. In their collaborative writing project Betweener Talk, Marcelo Diversi and Claudio Moreira (2010) write: ‘We can’t press the keys at the same time. But this introduction and the entire book are ours. Equally ours’ (p. 13). We experience the same constraint when we write collaboratively. We can’t press the keys together, contributing to the same piece, in the same moment. It is a physical impossibility. Yet through music, we can (see Douglas & Carless, 2014). We are able to work in a way that Diversi and Moreira note cannot be done through textual writing. In music, Kitrina may contribute a harmony vocal as David sings and plays one of his songs. David may add a second guitar part as Kitrina sings and plays one of her songs. We may co-write a song together, in the same place and time, one moving the chordal progression in this direction, the other transforming the rhythm as the chord changes occur. Together in real time. Each being led by and reciprocally informing the other. We both contribute in-the-moment, we create together, in the same instant. It feels like an embrace of sorts. It allows us to witness, respect, care for, elevate, and transform our work. And each other. It has allowed our work to continue. It has enabled us to keep going. May it continue to do so.