The sex of the police

Passion, love and power in the police stations of Buenos Aires

Abstract

This paper analyzes the place and characteristics of the sexuality in social and professional relationships inside the police force. We pay special attention in what this framework means within the study of how the careers of the policewomen develop. This is an ethnographic study with fieldwork in two police delegations of the Police de la Province de Buenos Aires (in Argentina). The scene of the police workspace is composed by the strong value of the sexual relationships, the local meaning of fidelity and the open rejection of chastity or sexual. These ideas are not only part of the culture but they also affect the moral definition of the police profession. Thus, this text advances to demonstrate that sexuality is put into play to ally with the power system of the police and to be regulated. It is not about thinking sexual repression as a virtue but about managing those feelings and sexual practices. This regulation is understood as a deep professional quality and whose good or bad management produces dissimilar authorities.