Upcoming Events

Rainbow Trap: Diversity Policies, LGBTQ Categories and the Dangers of Inclusion

Dr Kevin Guyan is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab. He is the author of Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) and Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). 

29 January 2026 4-5pm (GMT) 

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Abstract

Kevin Guyan shares ideas from his new book Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Categories and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). In this work, Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalities is shaped – and constrained – by the classifications we encounter every day.

Rainbow Trap examines queer encounters with six different systems – stretching from diversity policies in the film and TV industries to the algorithms powering dating apps – and highlights how the promise of inclusion requires LGBTQ people to locate themselves in an ever-growing list of classifications, categories and labels.

This requirement to be classified catches LGBTQ communities in a rainbow trap. Because when we look beyond the welcoming veneer of inclusive interventions, we uncover sorting processes that determine what LGBTQ lives are valued and what queer futures are possible.