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McLean approaches complexity as a necessary part of justice work, not something to eliminate. Community-engaged feminist internet research must stay responsive to context, participants, risk, and the politics of knowledge production, which means accepting uncertainty and adapting as the work unfolds (McLean, 2025). In practice, this “messiness” shows up in blurred boundaries (for example, between theory, methodology, and literature) and in the kinds of improvisation that rarely make it into final reports (McLean, 2025). The key implication is to resist overly “clean” narratives, which can hide exclusion, ongoing harm, and the new questions that emerge through the process.

This becomes especially clear in The Left Out Project, which found that harm also occurs within LGBTQIA+ communities, not only from outside them. Participants described experiences such as dismissal, misgendering, stalking, and non-consensual image sharing (McLean, 2025). Rather than smoothing this over, McLean treats it as an important and uncomfortable insight that challenges simple binaries of oppressor and victim, and highlights how harm can be interpersonal, community-based, and structural at the same time.

What this means for facilitators on and offline

• Accept that equity challenges are messy. Build time and permission for mid-course corrections (revising norms, revisiting framing, changing methods) rather than treating change as loss of control; McLean’s cases show this is how ethical, rigorous work stays aligned with lived realities (McLean, 2025). 

• Use discomfort as data, not a blocker. When tension spikes, silence, withdrawal, backlash, or over-policing. Provide multiple channels to surface discomfort (not only public debate) to include passive participants who may otherwise leave quietly (McLean, interview, February 2026).