Rainbow Trap: The Politics of Gender, Sex and Sexuality Categories

 Across data and statistics, some LGBTQ lives and experience are now counted. But what did these communities need to give up in order to be included?

 And is our current suite of data systems, methods and practices capable of reflecting the full diversity of people’s experiences – or are those who sit outside the demands for neat and tidy categories now doubly erased.

 Join Dr Kevin Guyan (University of Edinburgh) to explore ideas from his new book Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Categories and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury Academic).

The book examines queer encounters with six different systems – stretching from hate crime reporting to 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.

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).