ABSTRACT

This chapter illustrates how attaching negative affects like shame and fear to queer and transgender bodies contributed to the relative success of House Bill 2 (HB2). The impact of North Carolina’s HB2 has been far reaching, despite its partial repeal in March 2017. Following McCrory’s signing of the law, many companies and people—ranging from Lionsgate and PayPal to Ringo Starr and Bruce Springsteen—publicly boycotted the state, calling HB2 a civil rights violation. Queer theorists have identified several functions of affect as it relates to queer identities, experiences, and discourses in American culture. These functions—that affects attach, accumulate, create public spaces, and generate public sentiments—are essential for understanding how affects travel and contribute to significant cultural shifts. HB2 is especially rich for analysis, given that it was enforced largely on an affective—and not legal—level. In addition to attaching negative affects to queer-appearing bodies, pro-HB2 rhetoric relied on two central tropes: “privacy” and “security.”