Testo Junkie

August 26, 2013
Insightful yet incomplete, French gender theorist Preciado categorizes our modern era as “pharmacopornographic”—“a biomolecular (pharmaco) and semiotic-technical (pornographic) government of sexual subjectivity.” According to the author, pharmaceuticals transform “our depression into Prozac, our masculinity into testosterone, our erection into Viagra, our fertility/sterility into the Pill,” while the sex industry “control the sexuality of those bodies codified as woman and cause the ejaculation of those bodies codified as men.” Part theory, part memoir, the book also chronicles the author’s experimental consumption of testosterone, which she took every day for a year. She reports feeling like an addict on “T,” and describes her increased sexual desire and other elements of the transmasculine journey, such as going to drag-king workshops. Unfortunately, Preciado doesn’t manage to tie her experiment into her theory of pharamacopornography, and her conclusions about that global phenomenon do not fulfill her smash-the-gender-binary call. Preciado frequently equates transgenderism and gender liberation with the availability of testosterone and the expression of masculinity in bodies that are assigned the gender “female” at birth. The book also nearly completely omits any mention of transgender women. Agent: Mercedes Casanovas, Casanovas & Lynch.

October 15, 2013

In this first English translation of her book, which was published in Spanish and then French in 2008, Preciado (political history of the body, gender theory, & history of performance, Universite Paris VIII; Manifesto Contrasexual) deconstructs what it means to be masculine or feminine in today's society, given the wide availability of drugs and treatments for birth control, sexual dysfunction, low hormone levels, and gender dysphoria. She then analyzes the methods that the pharmaceutical and pornography industries use to market their products, playing to peoples' insecurities and feelings of inadequacy. Preciado does all this while documenting her own self-regulated daily treatments of testosterone, in a "kids, don't do this at home!"-type experiment as she seeks to measure the hormone's effects on her body and psyche. Part history, part sociological analysis, part commentary, and part diary, Preciado's book, ably translated by Benderson, is comprehensive and timely. VERDICT English-reading students of sociology, gender studies, or the pharmaceutical and pornography industries will enjoy this dizzying exploration of the relationships among individuals, corporations, and governments when it comes to gender expression, drug control and enforcement, and individual rights.--Mark Manivong, Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

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