What role do emotions play in the current structure of the legal system? What role do emotions play in feminist law reform?

ON ANGER AND ITS USES FOR ACTIVISM Alexa DeGagn

This chapter examines the role of anger in social justice activism, focusing specifically on contemporary lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB), queer, and trans

politics in Canada. Anger has many synonyms, among them acrimony, exasper- ation, furry, and petulance. Anger is also one of the many emotions associated

with social and political activism. Anger often erupts in the face of compla- cency, exclusions, perceived injustices, inequalities, and outright discrimination

and violence, emanating from the state and from civil society. However, anger is often dismissed in formal political settings as being irrational, inappropriate,

unproductive, and a violation of both familiar political protocols and estab- lished channels of claims-making. It is commonly argued that governments

are more receptive to hearing and addressing the grievances of marginalized

citizens when they follow formal institutional channels and conduct them- selves with "rationality" and "civility."

Anger is also identified as a reason to dismiss, deny, and undermine those who are speaking out against their marginality and inequality. Historically

and currently, particular members of society have been cast as irratio- nally and unreasonably angry, not the least those who identify as people

of colour, Indigenous, women, LGB, trans, gender-non-conforming, queer, mentally ill, disabled, or poor. The calling-out of injustices through anger is a challenge to existing and normalized power relations. Accordingly, those

who express anger are deemed irrational, uncooperative, uncivilized, inflex- ible, and even juvenile. The dismissal of what I term "anger activism" both

delegitimizes marginalized individuals and their claims, and reinforces the power relations that sustain the status quo.

On Anger and Its Uses for Activism 143 Women of colour feminist activists and scholars, such as Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, and Sara Ahmed, have long applauded anger and its uses in activism. They have argued that anger is an understandable and legitimate emotion in the face of injustices (Lorde 1984). Although anger is differently defined and regulated based on one's marginality and/or privileges, it can and does create solidarity within social justice communities (Collins 2000). These scholars point out, however, that anger can also challenge, transform, or unravel social movements when it is directed inwardfor example, when racism, classism, and other exclusions were challenged within the feminist movement itself (Ahmed 2004b, 2010). Although there is a deep and nuanced scholarship on the role and power of anger in feminist activism, there remains a stark lack of scholarship on the role of anger within LGB, trans, and queer activism, and even less so in the Canadian context. Canadian LGB, trans, and queer activists, nevertheless,

have expressed anger and used it to motivate their activism since the emer- gence of the LGB liberationist activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Accordingly,

in this chapter, I use anger as a case study to investigate how LGB, trans, and queer activists in Canada have articulated and fought for social justice issues,

asking whether LGB, trans, and queer activists favoured more tempered, "ratio- nal" assimilationist strategies, or whether they used anger to articulate and

motivate vocal challenging and radical strategies in their social justice projects. In what follows, I trace how anger has been taken up during several activist moments in Canadian LGB, trans, and queer politics since the 1960s. These activist moments include the gay bar raids and riots of the 1970s and 1980s, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the fight for same-sex marriage in the early 2000s. Many influential activists and governments, I argue, viewed same-sex marriage as the most important and even final goal of mainstream LGB campaigns for human rights, citizenship equality, and social justice. In contrast to the United States where same-sex marriage has been a bitterly contested social division, the fight for same-sex marriage in Canada was resolved relatively quietly by litigation through the courts as a logical extension of existing minority rights protections. As this chapter explains, however, the moments and events that preceded the court victories in Canada were fuelled by anger over injustices, discrimination, and violence. The fight for same-sex

marriage thus marked a decided shift from anger activism to an assimilation- ist and "tempered" strategy that emphasized loving emotions and positive

outcomes. This shift, however, distanced the mainstream of the movement

from more radical LGB, trans, and queer activism. Finally, this chapter exam- ines three contemporary moments of social justice activism in which anger

plays important, revealing, and varied roles: first, campaigns that problematize and challenge the priorities and tactics of the mainstream LGB movement in Canada; second, Black Lives Matter Toronto's involvement and protests during Pride Toronto's 2016 festival and parade; and third, the ongoing campaign to have gender identity added to the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code of Canada. Based on these cases, I argue that anger can be productive as it can galvanize marginalized citizens to challenge normalized power relations

within and outside the LGB, trans, and queer community, and forge new alli- ances that push back against silences, exclusions, and social injustice.