It was a great honour to be invited to review the June 2017 special issue of Qualitative Research examining democratic research practices. As social work scholars focusing on issues of gender, sexuality and intimacy, we have long been interested in how power and hierarchy in knowledge production serve to marginalise service users, practitioners and research participants. Here, we draw on our personal experience to consider what is at stake in attempting to democratise qualitative research methodologies in Hong Kong and Taiwan.