”Nu är du en karl för det du fått en hjelm på din bonde” - protestmaskulinitet i möten med polisen i några av Malmös omoraliska gaturum 1890–1899

Abstract

The decades around the turn of the last century saw a rapid urbanization in Sweden, that also gave rise to new forms of spatial regulation of (im)morality. One example is the regulation of prostitution where women who, according to the police, sold sex were forced to register as prostitutes and to live in police designated streets. In Malmö, the third largest city of Sweden, these streets were clustered in a handful of blocks in the decrepit eastern part of the old city center. On the one hand these  spaces were constructed as immoral, on the other hand they were also destinations for pleasure – at least for the customers who bought different forms of pleasure. This article understands these spaces as part of a pleasurescape, i.e. a part of the urban space where pleasure in different forms – some times illegal and often considered immoral – was available, and seeks to analyze how this pleasurescape interacted with unruly forms of working-class masculinity, focusing on instances where men came into conflict with the police. My results show that some excessive forms of unruly masculinity were policed to some extent, and that the policing often led to verbal or violent conflict with the police. Further, I argue that these conflicts also should be understood as parts of the doing of a protest masculinity and thus that the police served as an important counterpart and target that made these performances possible.