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For a number of years, women scholars have documented the difficulties faced when conducting research with male participants. This article contributes to this scholarship by reflecting on fieldwork I conducted with young men from a rural high school in Aotearoa/New Zealand. While the primary aim of this project was to collect moments of young men's talk that spoke to their understandings of gendered norms within (hetero)romantic relationships, I also ended up gathering other data in the form of how they interacted with me and each other during our discussions. What resulted were a range of challenges that appeared connected to my "outsider" status. This article exposes these challenges and offers my reflections on why they occurred, how I managed them at the time, and what I learnt in the process.

Research strongly suggests that the social conditions characteristic of rural communities impact gendered experiences of and beliefs about (hetero)romantic relationships. Largely, this is argued because of the privileging of heteronormative‐gendered roles within rural areas. What also is argued is that this privileging of heteronormativity correlates with the statistically higher rates of oppressive strategies that men are able to use to control their romantic partners. This article contributes to this body of work by analyzing how younger men from a rural high school in Aotearoa/New Zealand talked about the practice of “territory marking,” which involves men using physical violence against one another over women. What was most striking about their talk was how they spoke about this practice, as it was littered with a range of precarious elements. This meant that while it appeared cogent in places, it was also decidedly unknowing, fanciful, and ambiguous. This article will consider what this precarious talk says about how these young men cultivated a rural habitus, motivating them to articulate how idealized masculine bodies should function within public rural spaces. It will also be discussed how the precarious features of their talk signal how such idealized versions of masculinity could be destabilized.

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