Masculinity in Authority

Existing in New York for three weeks I encountered cops on every corner, including a cruiser that idled outside of my residence 24 hours a day. There was a level of surveillance that put me on edge, a dominant institutional authority that loomed over the pedestrians of the space. Not a single person I discussed this authority with felt safer because of their presence and a lot of them felt a little threatened by the cops because of their perceived ethnicity or gender. The male dominated cop force asserts a strong masculinity that is used against other men and minorities in the pedestrian space. While they did not over step their authority in front of me on this trip, their constant presence asserted the Big Brother voyeurism over public space, making it feel like we were not free but constantly monitored, which was accentuated by the security cameras on a lot of the corners.

In New York the male cops were not an authority that made us feel safe. There were three incidences where male security figures asserted their masculine dominance on the women in my group. A cop watching one of them change when they forgot to close their blind in the morning, a security guard trying to pick a couple of them up while on the job, and male security guards hanging out in the lingerie section of Macy’s, on duty but presenting an intimidating relationship with the female lingerie shoppers. One incident in Times Square after we saw Memphis gave me a great understanding of the masculinity of the police force. As Sarah went to ask for directions in Times Square, a group of four or five cops began a mating ritual with playful candour, flirting with our group of five beautiful tourists, bragging about their ‘Tony Award’ and getting their pictures taken with the girls. Using their position as authority, dripping with masculinity they displayed their feathers in a way to attract us and draw us in, circling us and ignoring the public around them.

The scarcity of female cops in New York was repeated at the G20 Summit in Toronto. While there was a minor female presence and the media tended to focus on the female cops as a way to soften the harsh masculine authority that dominated the peaceful protesters in the space, the majority of videos that made it onto the news or into Youtube are of male cops asserting their strength by forcing the public to submit to their power. In New York the police force was dominantly male, creating power dynamics with other women in the space as well as asserting their male power with other men. Do the gender dynamics change how our law is being enforced? It definitely does affect how the gendered public feels about their security in public space.