Description
Police sexual violence (PSV) forms part of the everyday experience of policing for many women, as well as for Black communities in the U.K. Yet, because it is both gendered and racialised, its practice and prevalence are routinely obscured, minimised, or dismissed. For example, Section 60 stop-and-search powers enable forms of PSV and ‘legitimate’ their overtly racialised application. At the same time, PSV is obfuscated through the eroticised culture of hetero-masculinity that underpins the institution of policing.
In this presentation, I analyse instances of PSV through a reformulation of police power as an erotic economy, in which categories of gender and race are continually produced and institutionalised. Here, the sensual is understood as part of the fabric of the police disciplinary apparatus, while the police’s ideological allure is sustained through eroticised fantasies of masculine protection that harbour darker desires of possession and conquest.
I conclude that PSV is not external to the ‘legitimate’ operations of police authority; rather, carnal logics of dehumanisation and abjection animate and license policing’s broader modus operandi. Exposing these constitutive logics is thus crucial for an informed understanding of police power and praxis, as well as for developing effective strategies of resistance.
