This article problematizes the research process on the transnational campaign in Burundi and Liberia for the implementation of UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. In this process, I began to relinquish the position I had previously shared, as a feminist scholar and activist, with the political elite and the advocacy network on the need for an “affirmative action model” and the introduction of quotas for women in government. My increasing discomfort with that position is analyzed to provide essential epistemic insight into the politics of discourse domination, the so-called public transcript (Scott, 1990) that characterizes the wider policy field. A reflexive approach to the study of social movements is adopted to overcome the implicit judgment in literature on the subject that, in an advocacy campaign, the contester and the contested are two distinct but unified social entities with stable and congruent narratives. The intention is to provide an account of the complex dyna-mics of fieldwork, wherein the researcher’s emotional responses can easily be directed towards the power politics of the advocacy campaign process and, consequently, her own psycho-social world may contain precious data.