We hear it all the time: Workplaces must become more inclusive. Yet, despite well-meaning intentions, many organisations remain deeply inhospitable to those who live outside the mainstream. So, here’s a question: What if our diversity initiatives are built upon a flawed understanding of identity and difference?
This is where queer theory – a field rooted in activism, resistance and lived experience – can offer something radically different. Take the 1969 Stonewall riots, often seen as the start of modern LGBTIQA+ rights movements. For queer theorists, this was not just a protest, it was a collective declaration: We exist, we matter. It marked a shift in how LGBTIQA+ individuals understood themselves – not as medical or criminal but as political agents, claiming space through difference. Stonewall remains also a powerful example of queer worldmaking. That revolt has since been remembered and institutionalised in annual Pride marches – a public celebration of queer resistance, solidarity and imagination.
Queer theory continues that legacy by challenging binaries and resisting normative expectations. Instead of wanting to include marginalised identities within existing systems, it asks tougher questions about identity, discomfort and the possibility of making (organisational) worlds otherwise.
Identity is not a box: Becoming otherwise
Queer theory challenges the assumption that identity is singular, stable or neatly classifiable. It insists that identity is fluid – shaped by movement, contradiction and in-betweenness. This resonates deeply with the lived experience of many queer people, people of colour, immigrants or disabled individuals, who often feel not fully at home in one place, but never quite in another either.
Yet in most organisations, these borderland identities go unrecognised. Inclusion efforts tend to rely on fixed categories – woman, Black, disabled, lesbian. But people’s lives are far more complex than any list of labels. Even when multiple categories are considered, the logic remains the same: identity as box-ticking. But boxes cannot contain the multiplicity of lived experience. They solidify a person into a reduced category, loaded with stereotypical connotations and omitting the kaleidoscope of experiences, relations, feelings and doubts.
So, what if inclusion weren’t about representing fixed identities, but about making space for complexity? What if diversity initiatives began with the understanding that we are always becoming – shaped by our histories, our relationships and the shifting worlds we move through? A politics of inclusion, then, would support not the recognition of fixed selves, but the unfolding of multiple selves – always becoming otherwise, in relation to others and to many worlds.
Feelings are facts: Feeling otherwise
If you’ve ever walked into a room and immediately felt out of place, you know that inclusion is about more than policies. It’s about atmosphere, mood and affect. Queer theory insists that we take these feelings seriously. Because behind that unease lies something real: the quiet decision of what must be hidden to survive, the tension of masking parts of yourself just to give the impression of belonging.
In many organisations, such discomfort is treated as a personal issue, something to be managed privately with a human resource manager or a coach. But discomfort is a signal of systemic friction. People feel out of place when dominant norms – about how to behave professionally, how to speak or how to work – don’t resonate. These norms may be unspoken, but they shape who feels at ease and who does not. For queer theorists, the resulting affective experiences illuminate the hidden architecture of power and exclusion.
So, imagine, then, that inclusion isn’t about headcounts or HR metrics, but about listening to the emotional undercurrents of an organisational setting. Imagine diversity initiatives that consider feelings as facts, approaching feeling otherwise as a form of knowledge. Inclusion would then start with the felt experience of unease, attending to the embarrassment, suspicion, vulnerability and frustration that emerge in inhospitable spaces.
From inclusion to (queer) worldmaking: Doing otherwise
Perhaps the most powerful contribution queer theory offers is the notion of queer worldmaking. By questioning and resisting identity categorisation, queer theory invites us to dis-identify from dominant frameworks. This implies neither to fully identify with them nor completely reject them. Instead, queer theory encourages us to navigate between and within these frameworks, utilising elements of the prevailing majoritarian culture as raw material to make a new version of our selves and of the world. A form of worldmaking, taking place both in the future and the present.
This ethos of worldmaking positions queer theory as inseparable from queer politics, bound to activism. Yet, within most organisational settings today, such political energy is largely absent. Diversity initiatives have become instrumentalised, often framed through the narrow lens of the business case – seeking advantage in difference, rather than addressing the systems that produce disadvantages. Meanwhile, the current political climate, marked by polarisation and fear, has rendered even modest diversity efforts controversial or suspicious.
But what if we reclaimed diversity work as a project of future worldmaking? What if inclusion wasn’t about folding difference into the existing system, but about transforming that system altogether? Imagine initiatives that centre care for our joint futures together, seeking a sense of collective belonging while resisting classification.
So, what can organisations do?
If we take queer theory seriously, we thus need to ask tougher questions: Are we making space for complexity, or simplifying people into labels? Are we listening to discomfort, or managing it away? And, are we protecting the status quo, or making something altogether more hopeful? Addressing these questions requires, we suggest, three practical shifts.
A first shift is to think of multiplicity. Queer theory requests us to not reduce people to fixed identities. Instead of asking ‘what are you?’, ask ‘what’s your story?’ And listen, in empathic and resonant ways, with all your senses. Create spaces – like story-telling sessions, mentorship circles or reflective sessions – where people can explore and share the complexities of life, work and human experiences.
A second shift is to centre affect. Take emotional experience seriously. Make space for conversations about discomfort, joy, confusion, and grief. These aren’t distractions; they are signals. When people feel unsafe, unseen or silenced, it means something is wrong in the system. And, rather than rushing to find immediate solutions, linger with these feelings for a while. There is no quick fix for uneasiness that is not just momentaneous but historically rooted. Some discomfort must be held, witnessed and understood before transformation becomes possible.
Third, queer theory opens up a radical shift to organisational worldmaking. Invite people to co-construct the future of the organisation, also taking into account ecological, technological and other contemporary challenges. Consider inclusive workplaces not as endpoints, but as experimental spaces for collective and sustainable transformation. Construct new social imaginaries, inspired by questions such as: What would a hospitable workplace look like that is liveable for all individuals, where nobody has to ‘come out’ because nobody is boxed in? Or, how can we become a community that lives solidarity in the face of growing division around issues of diversity, and that forms alliances with all those who take care of the planet?
Queer theory thus goes beyond queer identities. It challenges fixed norms and invites us to reimagine inclusive workplaces as new social imaginaries. This is not just about including the excluded but about asking what world we want to make together, beginning the creative process of worldmaking now. The 2019 opera Stonewall ended with the chant ‘Much to be done’, echoing the ongoing struggle for liberation. As backlash against LGBTIQA+ rights and diversity grows, this reminder urges us that while much remains to be done, it must be done otherwise.
Maddy Janssens is Professor in the Department of Work and Organisation Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium.
Chris Steyaert is Professor of Organizational Psychology at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland.
On Practicing Diversity by Maddy Janssens and Chris Steyaert is available on Bristol University Press. Order here for £80.00.
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