Data In/Visibility (Queer Data Studies) | Network Book Forum

Queer people have long been rendered invisible by data systems: survey questions that impose gendered binaries, inquiries that dismiss queer subjects as unimportant or insignificant, and ahistorical erasures of queer life that push queer experiences and knowledge further into the margins.

Yet visibility also comes with risk. Digital and biomedical surveillance, personal data breaches, and privacy concerns arise when indications of queerness, real or otherwise, are present and unprotected in datasets. The threat imposed by interlocking systems of anti-queer violence and oppression seeds movements away from visibility and towards fugitive tactics of refusal — a kind of strategic invisibility.

On February 15 in a conversation moderated by Data & Society Research Analyst Joan Mukogosi, Nikita Shepard and Harris Kornstein discussed this problem of data in/visibility as they explore it in their contributions to Queer Data Studies, an anthology edited by Patrick Keilty featuring essays that examine, from a range of disciplinary approaches, how data impacts queer subjects. Together, Shepard, Kornstein, and Keilty broke down the dichotomy between visibility and opacity of queer subjects in data, and engaged in the generative practice of thinking about data from and through queerness.