This article explores emotional harm in the context of the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure in Canada. With the exception of Matthew Weait in the United Kingdom, few scholars have examined what harm means in cases of HIV nondisclosure. We conceptualize the harm that follows nondisclosure as an affective response to the “HIV positive Other” and argue that law creates a legal norm about what harm is and feels like in cases of HIV nondisclosure when there is no clear consensus about how harm should be defined. Mobilizing the sociology of emotions literature, we contend that criminalizing HIV nondisclosure engages affective, moral, and criminal censure to regulate the behaviours of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH), thus reproducing HIV stigma and propagating emotional harm for PLWH. Canada’s response to HIV nondisclosure should instead involve a transformative justice approach that avoids the harm of criminalization and imprisonment while recognizing the emotional harm experienced by complainants.

High-profile controversies have created an impression that expressive freedom is imperilled on university campuses in North America. Analyses of this alleged campus crisis typically focus either on the negative psychosocial characteristics of those who oppose potentially harmful expression or on the cynical ways that expressive freedom can be invoked to normalize harmful expression. Conversely, I argue that theories of harm are key to understanding the contemporary discourse and politics of expressive freedom on campus. To shift the frame of analysis, I critically analyze three interrelated theoretical concepts that feature elastic conceptualizations of harm and are consequential for expressive limits in an academic environment: epistemic injustice, argumentational injustice and epistemic exploitation. I argue that all three concepts require a distinction between testimony and argumentation in order to better balance protection from harm, on the one hand, and expressive freedom and open inquiry, on the other.

Trinity Western University’s Community Covenant has been the subject of public and legal attention with specific reference to a proposed law school. At the heart of much of the contention about the law school, opponents have expressed concern about the provisions in the Covenant that restrict the rights of LGBTQI+ students—their identities and relationships. While much of the focus has been on the potential harm for LGBTQI+ students, and the expectation that law schools uphold Charter values—the voices of queer students and allies have largely been sidelined. This article offers space for LGBTQI+ students, staff and allies to discuss their lived experiences of sexual diversity and the harm facing the queer community at Trinity Western University. As they state, the Covenant is only a part of the issue; the culture it supports is what needs to change.