Research on sexual behavior, sexual identities, and sex work presents a number of ethical challenges, requiring ethnographers to balance many competing concerns•not least among these, the need to educate IRB reviewers who may have little prior understanding of the daily lives of persons engaged in various forms of sex work, or of life in sex or gender minority communities and subcultures (Hall 2019). Funding agencies and publication priorities may encourage framing sexuality research around pathology and socially stigmatized or legally proscribed deviance; for instance, research on same-sex sexuality has been heavily shaped by considerations of HIV/AIDS among men who have sex with men (MSM), to the relative neglect of other aspects of queer men’s lives, and of queer women’s lives even more so. Similarly, research on sex work is often driven by criminological considerations; funding agencies may try to shape premises and outcomes to fit particular moral narratives, while media coverage of research fundings may play into moral panics and adversely impact the community or persons being studied. More broadly, how do we develop an inclusive and comprehensive framework for research on lived sexual experiences•polyamorous, polygamous, kink/BDSM, or transactional•that may unsettle some observers’ expectations, or which may appear to be asymmetric or exploitative to outsiders but are not experienced as such by participants (Hammack, et al. 2019; Martin 2018)? Research on sex work may expose informants to legal or practical repercussions, yet without accurate research, how can we increase understanding (and perhaps improve the social situation) of persons engaged in sex work (Dewey and Zheng 2013)? How do ethnographers balance impulses towards activism with scholarly rigor? How do they navigate in politically and ideologically polarized settings, and how do they take into account the legal and public policy implications of their research (da Silva, et al. 2013)? How do we engage with persons who may have limited agency•minors, persons with physical or cognitive disabilities, or persons engaged with the carceral system? This panel brings together ethnographic researchers of various kinds of sex work, broadly defined, and of sexual behavior and identities generally, to foster constructive dialogue on these issues of ethical ethnographic engagement. a Silva, Ana Paula, Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette, and Andressa Raylane Bento 2013 Cinderella deceived. Analyzing a Brazilian myth regarding trafficking in persons Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 10(2). Dewey, Susan, T Orchard, and K Brown 2018 Shared precarities and maternal subjectivities: Navigating motherhood and child custody loss among North American women in street-based sex work. . Ethos: 46(1):27-48. Dewey, Susan, and Tiantian Zheng 2013 Ethical Research with Sex Workers: Anthropological Approaches. New York: Springer-Verlag. Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda 2009 Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. Hammack, P. L., D. M. Frost, and S. D. Hughes 2019 Queer Intimacies: A New Paradigm for the Study of Relationship Diversity. J Sex Res 56(4-5):556-592. Martin, Richard J., Jr. 2018 Toward an affective phenomenology of discourse: BDSM and the Fifty Shades phenomenon Journal of Language and Sexuality 7(1):30 •54.