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‘Watcha Gonna Do when they Cum all Over you?’ What Police Themes in Male Erotic Video Reveal about (Leather) Sexual Subjectivity

University of Kansas, USA, sammymuffin{at}yahoo.com

This article is a theoretical investigation into the appeal of police themes widespread in gay video pornography. I use this investigation as a pathway to certain broad, if polemical, conclusions about contemporary male subjectivity. I begin by identifying the reasons for Leathersex (a prominent expression of inter-male sadomasochism), due to the prevalence of police fantasies therein. A Durkheimian analysis explains Leathersex as a reparatory rite that addresses the liminality and inter-male alienation marking contemporary male subjectivity. Next, I draw on the literature on male rape in prison to explain how this conception of male subjectivity is a result of interpellation by the state, thereby accounting for the prevalence of police fantasies in Leathersex and Leathersex-inflected male erotic video. Lastly, I enter these insights about male subjectivity into dialogue with three videos by noted auteurs, unearthing the ambivalence that marks the relationship of male subjects to patriarchy and the patriarchal state.

Key Words: gay pornography • Leathersex • masculinity • prison rape • sadomasochism

Sexualities, Vol. 6, No. 3-4, 325-342 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/136346070363004


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