Since around 2020, a lot of queer people were finally let in.Into institutions that had ignored us, sidelined us, or treated us as a liability for decades. Suddenly we were wanted. Asked to advise. Asked to represent. Asked to sit on panels, lead staff networks, front Pride content, help “shape culture”. It felt like progress. It felt overdue.And then something shifted.The tone cooled. The questions stopped being curious and started being cautious. Budgets disappeared. Projects were quietly killed. Peo...
Since around 2020, a lot of queer people were finally let in.
Into institutions that had ignored us, sidelined us, or treated us as a liability for decades. Suddenly we were wanted. Asked to advise. Asked to represent. Asked to sit on panels, lead staff networks, front Pride content, help “shape culture”. It felt like progress. It felt overdue.
And then something shifted.
The tone cooled. The questions stopped being curious and started being cautious. Budgets disappeared. Projects were quietly killed. People who had been welcomed for their visibility were suddenly treated as awkward, political, or risky. The same doors that had opened so loudly were slammed shut — and we were left standing on the outside, marked as “other” again.
In Part 1 of a two-part interview, we’re joined by Kevin Guyan — one of the UK’s most respected thinkers on LGBTQ+ inclusion, power and systems. Kevin is the author of Queer Data and The Rainbow Trap, books that don’t flatter institutions or offer easy fixes. They ask harder questions about what inclusion actually costs the people being “included”.
We talk about what it really feels like to work inside organisations that love queer visibility but fear queer demands. The exhaustion of unpaid emotional labour. The pressure to be grateful just for having a seat at the table. The quiet expectation that you’ll soften yourself, simplify yourself, make yourself legible to straight managers who decide — consciously or not — which versions of queerness they’re comfortable digesting.
We ask the questions that don’t usually make it into DEI strategy documents.
Do queer people have to perform a role to survive at work?
What happens if you don’t “read” gay?
If you’re trans but don’t fit the image people expect?
If you’re a lesbian who doesn’t behave the way they think lesbians should?
If your identity is complicated, political, messy — or just inconvenient?
Kevin talks about the trap of being invited in on someone else’s terms. About “gratitude politics” — the idea that we should be thankful just to be tolerated. About how quickly inclusion turns into extraction, and how easily queer people become window dressing for institutions unwilling to change anything structural.
This isn’t a conversation about rejecting opportunity. Most of us can’t afford to. It’s about learning how to move through powerful institutions without losing your spine. How to recognise the red flags early. How to tell the difference between real support and rainbow garnish. And how to protect yourself when the political winds inevitably change.
Part 2 takes this further — into how inclusion becomes classification, and how data and bureaucracy are now being used to formalise who belongs, who’s manageable, and who gets erased.
But this first part is about the emotional reality. The whiplash. The silence. The moment you realise the door that opened so confidently can close just as fast.
And what you do next.
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