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

Abstract

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.