Rainbow Trap

Rainbow Trap is the first book to foreground the importance of systems - and their associated documents, policies and administrative practices - as a key battleground for LGBTQ equalities in the UK. Looking across digital and non-digital systems, Guyan investigates six systems - hate crime reporting and the police, dating apps, borders, film and television, the body, and the business world - and exposes a hidden rule book that constructs, categorises and commodifies LGBTQ identities. While many organisations, businesses and workplaces talk a lot about diversity and inclusion, the internal workings of most systems remain unchanged. Efforts to ''fix'' broken systems tend to follow a narrow set of options: elevate queer individuals to senior roles, add more ''diverse'' people into organisations, acknowledge historical injustices, gather better evidence and address biases. But these solutions aren''t working. Whether it is queer families fighting for each parent to be named on their child''s birth certificate, lesbian couples offered an inferior selection of mortgage rates, bisexual asylum seekers asked to provide ''proof'' of their sexuality, or gay actors forced to out themselves to meet diversity quotas, LGBTQ people encounter systems that are designed around a default person who is cisgender and straight. Everyone loses when systems repeatedly fail to reflect the world around us and make bad decisions based on biased assumptions. How we choose to engage with these systems - or if we choose to engage - is fundamental to everyone''s future.

Vorwort
The first book to foreground the importance of systems and their associated documents, policies and administrative practices as a key battleground for LGBTQ equalities in the UK.

Autorentext

Kevin Guyan is a Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK and Director of the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab. He is the author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).

Klappentext

Rainbow Trap reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalities in the UK is shaped - and constrained - by the classifications we encounter every day.

Looking across six systems - the police and the recording of hate crimes; dating apps and digital desire; outness in the film and television industry; borders and LGBTQ asylum seekers; health and fitness activities; and DEI initiatives in the workplace - Rainbow Trap documents how inclusive interventions - such as new legislation, revamped diversity policies and tech fixes - have attempted to bring historically marginalized communities out of the shadows.

Yet, as part of the bargain, LGBTQ people need to locate themselves in an ever-growing list of classifications, categories and labels to 'make sense' to the very systems they are seeking to access. 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.

Inhalt

Introduction: Queer Cogs in a Broken System

1. Hate Crimes: Safety, Protection and the Police
2. Dating Apps: Technology and the Curation of Desire
3. Culture: Outness in the Film and Television Industry
4. Borders: Truth, Sameness and the Politics of Evidence
5. Health and Fitness: Markers of Difference and the Body
6. Business: Queer Workers and Money Matters
   Conclusion: After Inclusion
   Acknowledgements
   Bibliography
   Index