Lesbian Police, Carceral Equality, and the Ambivalence of Confrontation

Bibliographic Data

ID3273989
AuthorsNikita Shepard (Elon University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume51
Issue1
Pages149-178
Publication date2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/736097
OpenAlexW4414759268
LanguageEN
References cited17

What role does the lesbian cop play in the carceral state and in LGBTQ movements, and what can that tell us about the legacy of lesbian feminism? This article traces a history of lesbians within US law enforcement from the 1970s to the present to explore tensions within lesbian and feminist politics around policing, safety, race, “male identification,” and divergent visions of equality and liberation. Drawing on a diverse archive of movement periodicals, sociological studies, oral histories, mystery novels, and television cop dramas, I analyze the political and cultural work that the figure of the lesbian cop has done to mediate between LGBTQ and feminist communities and institutions of state violence. This essay proposes the concept of carceral equality to designate the practices through which individual women and LGBTQ people articulate liberal feminist principles of equal access through their work as agents of the carceral state, providing both personnel and a political alibi for carceral feminist strategies. Tracking how shifts in movement strategies, media coverage, cultural representations, and law enforcement public relations (PR) strategies gradually overcame entrenched community opposition to police, I document how lesbian police came to embody the strategy of carceral equality, redirecting confrontation against structures of state violence to confrontation within them. The essay concludes with the recent wave of protests to end police participation in Pride marches, arguing that lesbian-feminist legacies of opposition to policing and prisons offer tools for contemporary activists to confront the ambivalent legacy of the lesbian cop and to dismantle carceral equality

Ambivalence · Feminism · Lesbian · Opposition (politics) · Politics · Pride · Queer · Vision · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gender, Security, and Conflict · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy

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