Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion
The fight for LGBTQ+ equalities is shaped – and constrained – by the design and control of categories of gender, sex and sexuality.
LGBT History Month 2026
Date: Wednesday 25 February 2026
Time: 10:15 - 12:30
Venue: Studio 2, The Advanced Research Centre, 11 Chapel Lane, Glasgow, G11 6EW
Category: Staff workshops and seminars
Speaker: Dr Kevin Guyan
This is an in-person event for UofG Staff and Students Only. A valid UofG Staff or Student email address is required to book your ticket.
The fight for LGBTQ+ equalities is shaped – and constrained – by the design and control of categories of gender, sex and sexuality.
Join researcher and writer Dr Kevin Guyan (University of Edinburgh) to explore ideas from his new book Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion. Copies of the book can be ordered at Category Is Books.
In the book, Guyan 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).