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.

 We are delighted GLINTS  co-director  Dr Kirstie Ken English will be joining us to introduce and chair the event.  

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).