Conducting research on LGBTQ+ people – there is no LGBT without the B, the T or all the other identities included within ‘LGBT’
Posted by Dylan
The responses received to the Queerantine study’s questions on sexual orientation and gender identity provided an insight into the multitude of ways in which LGBTQ+ people choose to identify, and also highlighted that many of us choose not to identify with a specific category at all. Analytically, the diversity of identities we encounter is tricky for researchers to handle. Often we use LGB/LGBT/LGBTQ+ as an analytical unit – i.e. as a unit of analysis to make comparisons with heterosexual people. The merits and disadvantages of this approach is an issue that has cropped up in a number of recent commentaries, is something that was a feature in my own recent work on older LGB and LGBT people [1-3], and is something we have had to work through and carefully consider in analysing and reporting the first findings of the Queerantine study.
This is an important issue - without discussing and critiquing this element of research practice, our understanding of key areas of social life fails to advance, we risk becoming increasingly intolerant of non-normative ways of thinking, and subscribe to normative ways of understanding the social world. Exploring difference and counter-narratives is, after all, a central core of queer theory itself – the idea that LGBT people’s experiences are worthy of consideration and study in their own right and not as an ‘appendage’ to general cultural theory [4] or other dominant theories. The entry here on the Queerantine website is an attempt and to think through the extent to which the claims we make within LGBTQ+ research can travel across the diversity of identities, and why the system in which we conduct research might mean we examine the experiences of some groups in order to make inferences about the experiences of the spectrum as a whole.
Why collectivise
A collectivised approach to researching LGBTQ+ people is one where we may make broad statements about the experience of LGBTQ+ people without giving due consideration as to whether the research is actually representative of the groups represented within the acronym. Some contend that taking a collectivised approach to LGBT research is questionable research practice. On the face of it, this appears indisputable. LGBTQ+ people and identities differ from one another in immeasurable and, as yet, little understood ways. LGBT life course trajectories vary across different identities within the spectrum but have traditionally been poorly documented and poorly theorised, perhaps because of their divergence from one another. Taking a collectivised approach increases the risk that we adopt a dominant narrative that can be used to describe LGBT experiences, can actively marginalise groups and intersections contained within the acronym, force a label onto people that actively reject the ascription of that label, lead to misunderstanding about the needs of LGBT people. These are all immutable risks of using labels such as LGBT.
But it may also be useful to consider the fundamentals of why we collectivise these experiences. All of the diverse identities that fall within the LGBTQ+ acronym will have experienced oppression and othering. Although some groups are at greater risk than others, as our own research has shown, the common thread connecting these groups is the experience of being confronted by, and confronting, a heteronormative society. As a result, we can assume that groups within the LGBTQ+ acronym experience stress related to forms of prejudice and discrimination including homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, expectations of rejection or hiding or concealing one’s self. These forms of discrimination and prejudice are expected to directly and indirectly shape life course trajectories – including employment, housing, partnership, parenthood careers but also in terms of variations in physical and mental health – so that older LGBT people ‘arrive’ at older age, and experience later life, with different forms of material, social and health capital. This connection provides the basis for collectivisation, although the extent to which different groups have and do experience discrimination and prejudice is not well understood. The contention that we can’t assume that this experience of prejudice and discrimination occurs to the same extent, or has the same deleterious impact, which is fundamental to critique of collectivisation in research, is a valid one. Nevertheless, the theory is expected to hold across these groups – these groups are expected to have experienced, and to continue to experience, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia that is theorised to result in poorer health outcomes compared to heterosexual and cisgender older people [5 6].
Collectivisation, social action and power
The collectivisation of LGBT and ‘lumping’ together of diverse experiences to some extent mirrors forms of social action and organisation. Those that denote the ‘LGBT’ ‘label’ in research merely as a convenience and overlooks its role as tool for social change. The history of LGBT as a collective term is somewhat chequered and the extent to which LGBT people have pulled together for collective action across all of the groups contained within the LGBT acronym in the past maybe contestable. Previously, mutual support within the acronym may have reflected inadequate forms of tacit support rather than explicit action, and in early movements the rights and actions of some groups may have been viewed as antagonistic to those of others. However, recent years have solidified social action under the LGBT banner. Trans rights are recognised as an LGBT issue; biphobia is a concern for LGBT organisations, and lesbian women and gay men organise both pride and protest as LGBT people. The largest LGBT rights organisations in the UK (Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation) do, indeed, represent all groups within the acronym, as well as those not specifically included within the acronym (e.g. intersex). This does not imply that lesbian and bisexual women don’t also organise as oppressed women, that trans people don’t also organise collectively to promote their representation within and beyond the LGBT spectrum, or that LGBT people from minoritised ethnic groups don’t collectivise under the Black Lives Matter movement in ways that white LGBT people don’t (but likely should). Nevertheless it remains that the LGBT acronym is more than a label of convenience, it is also tool for social action. Critiques around the use of LGBT ‘community’ and LGBT ‘groups’ overlook this aspect entirely – LGBT people do organise as communities and groups for social change and against injustice. Health inequalities are a form of injustice. That researchers working in the space of LGBT ageing mirror the social world that they are studying is perhaps unsurprising.
However, more than this, researchers in this space are working with a patchwork of evidence that mirrors the power dynamics within the real world. We know little about bisexual and transgender ageing and older people’s experiences because there is little research on these groups; this reflects the power dynamics within the LGBT acronym. The argument that we cannot synthesise evidence in a broad-brushed way on the experience of LGBT people because it further masks or obfuscates the experiences of these groups may have merit. However, if research and evidence is used as the basis for social action for LGBT people, presenting findings about majority groupings alone risks reproducing and reinforcing power dynamics, and we could risk marginalising these groups further. Researchers using the LGBT acronym as an analytical unit are making the assumption that there is sufficient analytical generalisability to assume that the experiences of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia have enough commonality across the spectrum when making comparisons with heterosexual, cisgender people. They are also making the statement that there is no LGBT without the B, the T or all the other identities included within ‘LGBT’ but not explicitly identified within the acronym. For research addressing broad questions that involve considering inequalities between heterosexual cisgender people and LGBT people, the collectivisation of LGBT experiences may be useful in this respect, but with clear demarcation of where differences are known to exist within the LGBT acronym. Perhaps as researchers, particularly in the funding and publishing climates within which we operate, we owe it to the community that we serve to both produce research that both pools and combines together the oppression experienced by the LGBT community, as well as research that seeks to understand different configurations of experience and othering within the spectrum. A concern from not conducting research that collectivises experience is that we inadvertently risk continuing to reproduce the power dynamics within the community.
Three other issues are also worth mentioning briefly regarding the use of a collective term. Firstly, using more granular terminology doesn’t necessarily entail labelling or categorising of individuals that is commensurate with their own perceptions or values. More precise terminology, for example lesbian women, as opposed to a collective term, can imply that all women who are ascribed the label of lesbian within a research study identify this way, although this may not be the case. For example, many people do not identify with a particular label or in ways not captured by the initialisms included by LGBT. Furthermore, we know that there are systematic differences between women who prefer not to attach any label to their sexuality and women who do identify within specific categories of LGB [7]. For some, ascription as belonging to a broader collective term may be more accurate, particularly where they reject ascription as belonging to a specific category. Second, using collective terms can be useful to ensure that we also compare inequalities and injustices with similarly broad collectives, and don’t stray into forming comparison groups without sufficient analytical power. For example, if our interest were on transgender men, we may be tempted to draw comparisons with cisgender men, although doing so would conflate the experience of heterosexual and gay and bisexual men; however if we were to improve our precision and compare the experiences of transgender men and cisgender heterosexual (or gay/bisexual) men, then we are implicitly overlooking the sexuality of transgender men. We may then have to add in a further comparison of heterosexual transgender men and gay/bisexual transgender men. Collectivising experiences is response to this dilemma. Thirdly, several of the critiques made against collectivisation also appear to advocate intersectional approaches and particularly the intersection of sex/gender in polarised ways as a remedy to collectivisation. This can be problematic for some LGBT people, who identify variously as agender (without a gender), nonbinary or gender fluid (neither exclusively masculine or feminine), third gender, or queer (a broad umbrella term for individuals who are non-cisgender or non-heterosexual but who reject other labels, including gender labels in some cases). If we are to take an intersectional approach, it must be inclusive of the way in which sex/gender is identified, or rejected, across the spectrum. Furthermore, we must not fall into a trope where intersectional analysis (i) stops at sex/gender intersections alone; or (ii) uses labels of collectivisation, and specifically BME or BAME, that are themselves often explicitly rejected by many ethnic minorities in the UK [8].
The context within which we work
Considering the use of collectivisation in research does raise important points. Lumping of LGBT experiences distorts differences that may be trivial or may be highly problematic. Such lumping needs to be challenged as it has permeated into research. However, we must also recognise that collectivisation happens for theoretical and analytical reasons and reproduces the organisation of social movements whose work we often want to inform. But more than anything, the practice of lumping of LGBT experiences cannot be overcome without first acknowledging the system in which LGBT research takes place. The reality is that applied research on LGBT health and wellbeing, is chronically underfunded, is often conducted in researchers own time, and reliant on existing evidence, data and networks that are often only partially representative. For example the recent UKRI call for research on COVID-19 has seen chronically little investment into LGBT experiences during the pandemic – young or old. When LGBT research is funded, particularly in applied social sciences, it is often done so with a view that a single project on LGBT issues is sufficient to cover the breadth of issues across the LGBT spectrum. This ‘one shot’ approach places LGBT researchers in direct competition with one another for a prize that is not shared. It also means that we lose the richness and diversity of epistemological perspectives that we might encounter in research on other groups. It can also place enormous burden on the shoulders of researchers to ensure that their research can be used to improve circumstances across the LGBT spectrum, in many ways encouraging the use of LGBT as a collective and unifying term. But the implications of this funding gap is far-reaching. It means that not only do we not see sufficient numbers of LGBT projects of sufficient breadth and depth, it also means that where projects are funded they are of small scale and lack some of the supports that larger better funded projects may have. This includes academic steering groups but particularly stakeholder engagement groups where the views of lay LGBT people can be directly incorporated and shape the research from the outset. This funding gap is also reflected in research careers. Undertaking research into LGBT ageing and LGBT issues more broadly is likely to involve a disproportionate amount of bouncing between short-term research contracts, only some of which may involve specialist LGBT research. More conventionally, researchers wishing to undertake research into LGBT ageing, health and wellbeing may have to do so as a ‘hobby’, without the range of supports that fully funded research projects receive.
The arguments put forward by detractors of collectivised approaches are that these are forms of poor research practice with little place in the field. The contention is that there is a place for research that involves epistemologies both of collectivisation and intersectionality in LGBT research, particularly given the broader context within which we work.
Dylan Kneale
Photo by Toa Heftiba Åžinca from Pexels References
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3. Kneale D, Thomas J, French R. Inequalities in health and care among Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people aged 50 and over in the United Kingdom: A meta-analysis of individual participant data The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 2020
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