Out of place: women’s experiences of policing in protest spaces

Abstract

This article considers women’s experiences of policing at anti-fracking protests at Barton Moss, Salford, which took place between November 2013 and April 2014. Specifically, the article examines the spatial dynamics of the policing of women and argues that the policing of protest demands feminist analysis. Drawing upon narratives collected from women protesters at Barton Moss, which explore experiences of sexual violence perpetrated by police, we argue that the protest site needs to be considered as a space that facilitates violence against women. Understanding the specifics of the Barton Moss protest as an extended protest situation characterised by direct action protest and an intense and often violent police response, we suggest that women’s experiences of policing were a product of the spatial and temporal dynamics of the protest and policing operation. We consider the protest site as a productive, institutional space within which police violence takes a specifically gendered form enabling the control of those women deemed to be out of place. In turn, we argue that the women at Barton Moss were considered by the police to be transgressing the socio-geographical boundaries which establish the dominant cultural and social order and were thus responded to as disruptive and disorderly subjects.