Policing, Sexuality, and Gender. Feminism Between Critique of Power and Punitiveness<\/strong> The police remains a hetero-masculine institution. Perpetrators, prisoners, and victims of (police) violence are predominantly male. Sexual violence, however, mostly affects women and trans people, and the \u201cideal victim\u201d (N. Christie) and fear of crime are regarded as female. Policing and punishment are gendered. Particularly in public spaces, sexual and gender \u201cdeviance\u201d is marginalized and controlled. In private life, sexual violence was of little interest until feminist battles changed this. This introduction aims to give an overview over these issues and the categories conveying power structures within policing. Nevertheless, the manner in which they are addressed must be analyzed from a perspective critical of power, since protecting women and children has been used in expansion of control.<\/p>\n Police Violence and Gender<\/strong> To this day, \u201cwarrior masculinity\u201d (Rafael Behr) or \u201caggressive masculinity\u201d (Kai Seidensticker) are considered hegemonic within the police. The article examines the link between these masculinities and violence. The question is raised how gender constructions are connected to excessive and thus illegal police use of force. For this purpose, a case of homophobic police violence in Cologne is analyzed. Since the police actions were deemed unlawful by a court, we can trace the role of masculinity in excessive use of force by the police and its processing. Taking into account feminist conceptualizations of the state as gendered (Birgit Sauer), and adding to the analyses hitherto focused on \u201ccop culture\u201d, the article maps out how from a feminist approach, constructions of masculinity become visible in the application and judicial processing of excessive police use of force.<\/p>\n Gender and the Police\u2019s Production of Space<\/strong> Women have been part of the German police force for 40 years. Nonetheless, the significance of masculinity in police culture has been remarkably persistent. An analysis of institutional productions of space provides answers to the question how masculinity is legitimized as one of the police\u2019s constitutive components. The article demonstrates that aggressive masculinity, which collides with current general ideals of maleness, is reproduced in spaces of the \u201cOthers\u201d. Spaces of migrant lower classes are considered dangerous, and toughness and strength are deemed necessary in controlling them. Male officers present themselves as protecting their female colleagues from the alleged threat of \u201cuncivilized\u201d migrant masculinity, thereby restoring colonial narratives.<\/p>\n Digital Violence: Everywhere and Nowhere<\/strong> Digital violence against women is increasingly becoming part of violence in relationships. Particularly men are using digital technologies to surveil, expose, or intimidate women. When dealing with police and law enforcement, those affected not only face commonplace trivialization of violence against women, but also digital incompetence. Although often suggested by politicians, the issue does not lie in a lack of criminal laws.<\/p>\n The Neoliberalization of Sexuality<\/strong> After New Year\u2019s Eve 2015\/16 in Cologne, \u201cgroping\u201d was discussed by the public at large, and the laws governing sexual offences was expanded. 2017, the hashtag \u201cmeetoo\u201d gained prominence in Germany, as well. Currently, the laws concerning sexualized violence against children are being reformed. The ongoing sexual scandalizations points to a common syndrome: the crisis of male-hegemonial sexuality. Meanwhile, criminal law in this field is being transformed from a fragmented set of rules into a universal remedy against intimate conflict situations, albeit facilitating pacification in the short term only. The article points out the background of the new sexual discourse and its depoliticizing impact: structural conflicts over the balance of gender and power in society appear as subtext at best, conveying themselves to the public in a never ending sequence of individual fates.<\/p>\n Criminal Law for Women\u2019s Rights? Interview with Christina Clemm<\/strong> Christina Clemm is a criminal law and family law attorney in Berlin who is active against sexualized and racist violence, and was part of the Interior Ministry\u2019s latest expert commission on the reform of criminal laws on sexual offences. In this interview, she emphasizes the need for intersectional feminist perspectives. She criticizes the lack of scientific expertise in police and criminal justice on sexualized and gendered violence, and explains why combatting these issues (still) requires criminal law and accessory private prosecution in our current society.<\/p>\n Aggressive Police Masculinity<\/strong> As the societal balance of power changes, so does the police. Publicly, diversity and gender inclusion are emphasized. But taking a look at gender in police work, we see that aggressive police masculinity is still a predominant pattern. However, as masculinity can no longer be taken for granted, it is justified in new ways. In a multigendered police, exclusively male spaces no longer exist per se, but must be actively established. This is done by naturalizing qualities associated with maleness, such as toughness and strength, as purported necessity for certain tasks. These qualities are frequently highlighted, e. g., in formally gender-neutral employment ads, heroic stories told within the force, or in athletic competitions. Thereby, hierarchies are (re)produced between men and women as well as among different masculinities.<\/p>\n Racist stigma and \u201ccombating organised crime\u201d<\/strong> For more than ten years, the topos of \u201cmobile criminal groups\u201d has been at the centre of the police’s combat against allegedly organized property crime. In the context of a persecution strategy that aims to unveil networks of perpetrators, in particular people seen as Roma are at high risk of becoming targets of police investigations.<\/p>\n The AfD as Object of Surveillance<\/strong> For years, the \u201cFederal Office for the Protection of the Constitution\u201d (BfV), the German domestic intelligence service, had no interest in the activities of the right wing \u201cAlternative f\u00fcr Deutschland\u201d (AfD). However, in March 2021, the media reported that the BfV had declared the AfD a \u201ccase of suspicion\u201d \u2013 a classification which would have allowed for the surveillance and infiltration of the party, the largest opposition group in the Bundestag. In a preliminary decision, the administrative court of Cologne prohibited the surveillance because it would inadmissibly interfere with the \u201cequal opportunities of the parties\u201d. While the surveillance of the AfD is thus currently on hold pending a final decision, the intelligence service is urgently trying to demonstrate that it is not turning a blind eye to the right, and has found new objects of interest in the remnants of the \u201cPegida\u201d movement and the Corona-oriented \u201cQuerdenker\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thematic Focus: Sex, Gender, and Control Policing, Sexuality, and Gender. Feminism Between Critique of Power<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cilip-126","category-summaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nby Jenny K\u00fcnkel<\/p>\n
\nby Hannah Esp\u00edn Grau<\/p>\n
\nby Eva Brauer<\/p>\n
\nby Anne Roth<\/p>\n
\nby Daniela Klimke and R\u00fcdiger Lautmann<\/p>\n
\n(interviewed by Tom Jennissen and Jenny K\u00fcnkel)<\/p>\n
\nby Kai Seidensticker<\/p>\nNon-Thematic Contributions<\/h4>\n
\nby Eric T\u00f6pfer<\/p>\n
\nby Heiner Busch and Norbert P\u00fctter<\/p>\n