‘We Have to Be Allies to the Allies’: Social Activists' Emotional Labor in Interactions With Allies

Extensive research has examined how social movements use emotions to mobilize participants and sustain commitment among beneficiaries of the movement, those who belong to the marginalized groups the movement serves. Less is known about the emotional means through which social movements mobilize and retain allies, who are insiders who actively work to achieve the movement's goals yet are also members of dominant society who benefit from the very structures that the movement attempts to change. This paper fills this gap by examining the complex emotional landscape of activist‐ally interactions and their implications for the emotional labor employed by social movement activists. In an interview study of 41 trans social activists in the United States and Israel, we found that activists engaged in three types of emotional labor—containing, counteractive, and oppositional—to cultivate and manage the emotional experience of allies. These types varied in the degree to which they challenge existing mindsets and beliefs. Together, they work to transform power dynamics with allies without alienating them. We theorize that these three types of emotional labor help activists turn negative or ambivalent emotions such as anger, frustration, or hurt into resources in the activist‐ally relationship. When successful, these practices strengthen the relational basis for activism and render allyship more effective. We contribute to the social movement literature an understanding of how social movements mobilize and commit allies to the movement without cultivating a collective identity. We contribute to the emotional labor literature by showing how, unlike emotional labor in business organizations, activist emotional labor can be a form of resistance, not acquiescence, to social structure.