Over the last year I’ve noticed a growing number of review requests landing in my inbox asking me to feed back on LGBTQ+ research proposals, ethics applications and papers (5 in the last year!). Most of this work is framed within a wider theme of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and from what I understand it is often being done by people without any previous experience in the field. 

This isn’t my research area – the last time I did my own research about anything LGBTQ+ related was during my MA dissertations. Rather I’m being asked to comment based on my lived experience as a queer person. There’s nothing essentially wrong with this, at first I didn’t mind so much, but in my experience there’s a point at which it can become a problem in practice.

This is the case when significant input is required of a reviewer to correct repeatedly different people’s assumptions of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, exclusion of gender minorities, inaccurate language use, and/or lack of insight about LGBTQ+ issues, research, organisations, activism etc. 

Let’s remember my insights on these topics haven’t come about from my work or a fun hobby I have in my spare time. They are the result of a lifetime of navigating the world as a queer person (I am gay/lesbian and genderqueer). 

Much of this experience has been positive – being queer is generally speaking a lot of fun! Positive experiences include all the time and energy I’ve invested over the years in queer arts, queer archives and oral history, queer libraries, MA research projects etc. Through these experiences I have learned a tremendous amount about LGBTQ+ diversity and histories. But some of my experiences have, of course, not been so positive. Exclusion, rudeness, harassment, discrimination, even the odd physical assault have not been uncommon, especially when I was younger. I’ve also learned a lot through these experiences.

The expectation that I draw on these rich insights from my lived experience to help (mainly straight) researchers that are perhaps a bit too confident in their ability to enter the field precisely because they lack any such experience and insight therefore feels a bit exploitative. I don’t get anything from this reviewing work beyond a headache. My feeling with most of these reviews has been that I am helping the researcher and their career, rather than helping develop anything of real value to LGBTQ+ people. That’s a very uncomfortable power dynamic for me. 

Over time it has become emotionally draining to read these kind of proposals and papers. It’s so easy for even well-intentioned researchers with no real insight into LGBTQ+ lives and histories to trivialise serious and complex issues, further marginalise minorities within the LGBTQ+ space, to ‘other’ LGBTQ+ people in their choice of words, and inadvertently foster feelings of exclusion rather than positively contribute to LGBTQ+ flourishing.

While it’s not the case that people can only do good LGBTQ+ research if they have lived experience, it is the case that not everyone is cut out for it, particularly if they want to dive in without a nuanced understanding of the subject and their positionality in relation to it. 

So, based on various things I’ve seen over the last year I’ve come up with a few (not at all comprehensive) questions I think people ought to be asking themselves before engaging in research that aims to work specifically with LGBTQ+ participants:

First, why do you want to do the research? Are LGBTQ+ people merely a ‘gap in the research’ in your field that you think you could fill to tick the originality box? Or do you have a genuine and longstanding desire to contribute to LGBTQ+ inclusion & flourishing? 

If the former, there is a deep critique in the social sciences about such research you should probably engage with. Are you potentially exploiting others’ exclusion for your own gain as an academic? If so, you are not the right person to do this research.

If the latter, are you sure? What does LGBTQ+ inclusion and flourishing mean to you – would the majority of LGBTQ+ people agree? Who among them might not? What’s your take on that? Is your desire for inclusion and flourishing about all the letters in the acronym in all their diversity? Is your proposed research really about all the letters in the acronym? Can you answer all these questions confidently?

Do you even know what all the letters mean? What about the +? Do you have a good understanding of the history on the acronym – how it has evolved and why? What’s your take on this? Do you have a good understanding of how misunderstandings, exclusion, harassment and oppression can take place between and within letters of the acronym, as well as from outside it? 

If yes, good, you have some insight into your research population, but everyone needs to keep learning. If no, you are probably not the right person to do this research right now.

Next up, consider your subjectivity and ‘gaze’. How do you see and frame LGBTQ+ people in general and in your proposal? What is your standpoint? Do you suggest LGBTQ+ people are something hidden or invisible, and therefore need researching? If so, I’m presuming you are not LGBTQ+ and have little interaction with LGBTQ+ people, culture and research  – and are therefore probably not the right person to do the research. LGBTQ+ people are not invisible from the viewpoint of LGBTQ+ people, their friends, family and genuine allies. Are you ‘othering’ LGBTQ+ people in some way?

Then check your context. LGBTQ+ people have very different experiences from country to country, region to region, organisation to organisation, street to street. What is safe in one context is dangerous in another. While you may advocate for one intervention in one country e.g. LGBTQ+ recognition in information systems and databases, is that really sensible to advocate for in every national context? Is it your place to be advocating for that in a context you don’t know well? Same with research findings when reviewing the literature. Context matters. 

Then check your logic. How are you forming categories of people? Have you categorised everyone in the LGBTQ+ umbrella as sexual minorities – if so, why have you excluded gender minorities? Have you reproduced heteronormative constructs such as ‘previous research has focused mainly on women – thus excluding LGBTQ+ people’? 

If you have made category errors, don’t see this as an easy mistake to make. Don’t dismiss it as LGBTQ+ people just being too confusing or dynamic to get right. Similarly don’t brush under the carpet your limited understanding of the complexity of context or your positionality. Instead of diving in, you really need to think deeply about whether you have enough insight not to cause harm through your proposed research. You might be better off contributing to LGBTQ+ flourishing by working on your own ingrained cis/heteronormativity and how this plays out in your everyday life.

If you feel confident in your knowledge of your participants, next is the subject matter e.g. library stock, systems design, mental health, carers, health care. Do you have a deep enough understanding of the experiences of different identities within the LGBTQ+ umbrella in relation to your topic? How have they evolved over time – across generations of queer people? Could you cause harm by being insensitive to these issues? Do you know what LGBTQ+ people are already doing to try and address it? Have you read not only the core research literature, but also checked out LGBTQ+ organisations, groups, publishers, bookshops, research networks, blogs etc. Don’t imagine you are the first to make an observation or intervention – you are not. Just because something is a new observation or insight to you, does not make it original.

And finally, if you organise a review process e.g. as an editor or ethics coordinator, I suggest you also keep in mind these things before sending reviews to LGBTQ+ people for their lived experience insights. For genuine inclusion, non-LGBTQ+ folk need to step up and do the deep learning and reflection to be able to recognise these issues for themselves, rather than relying on LGBTQ+ people to do the hard work – work that includes managing feelings of marginalisation that can result from undertaking reviews of such work. By expecting LGBTQ+ people – or any other potentially marginalised group for that matter – to perform this labour, institutions are contributing to the multitude of issues that distract them from their actual work, a burden that is not experienced by majority identity people.

There is nothing positive for me as the LGBTQ+ reviewer in contributing to this work, so I’ve decided enough is enough. From now on I’m looking after myself and the next poorly conceived LGBTQ+ research proposal or paper I get sent through to review is likely to get nothing more than a link to this blog post in response.

Happy pride month 2022! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️