Abstract

Drawing on interview data of gay men who have had their behavior in public spaces scrutinised by agents of the law for signs deviance, this article explores the historical characteristics of police animosity towards such conduct in Australia. This entails examining encounters between police and gay men who pursue desire in ‘beat’ spaces. Exploring why these outlaw gay male subjects are so abject and troubling to the law, the discussion documents how law’s desire to regulate gay men plays out in the masquerade of ‘plain-clothes’ agentprovocateur operations where police entrap gay men by mimicking gay bodily appearances, gestures and mannerisms. This article also examines how police regulation of gay desire functions as a form of violence that delimits expressions of same sex desire in public spaces. A key theme that underpins the analyses in this paper is that the policing of desire in ‘beat’ spaces helps produce qualities of illicitness and dangerousness and that this, in turn, fuels the circuit of desire at play between gay men and agents of the law.