Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era by Paul B. Preciado

Author:Paul B. Preciado
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781558618381
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2013-09-22T22:00:00+00:00

9. TESTO-MANIA

A week ago, during a night of work on Testogel, the barriers give way and I finally manage to understand in detail the stages in the formation of gender—all the way to the condition of sexuality itself. Each element finds its proper place, and the mechanisms link together:

Male x Homo x Sado x Testosterone x Estrogen

= Trans = (µ )

Female x Hetero x Maso x Estrogen x Testosterone

Sniffing cocaine. Ingesting codeine. Injecting morphine. Smoking nicotine. Taking Prozac. Swallowing amphetamines. Taking Heptamyl. Drinking alcohol. Putting yourself on Suboxone. Going back on Special K. Shooting heroin. Getting high on laughing gas. Relapsing with crack. Smoking cannabis. Popping some E. Taking an aspirin. Snorting crystal meth. Taking Lexomil. Applying Testogel: artistocratic pharmacomania.

Why bother changing your mental state when you can change your sexopolitical status? Why change your mood when you can change identities? Behold the sexopolitical superiority of steroids.

We must know whether we want to change the world to experience it with the same sensorial system as the one we already possess, or whether we’d rather modify our body, the somatic filter through which it passes. Which is preferable: changing my personality and keeping my body, or changing my body and keeping my current manner of experiencing reality? A fake dilemma. Our personalities arise from this very gap between body and reality.

Power girls—orgasms—adrenaline—extravagance—social recognition—success—glucose—family acceptance—inclusion—strength—tension—camaraderie—financial ascent. In the space of six months, these are the political surplus values obtained by a cis-female who ingests testosterone.

Testosterone is immediate gratification, an abstract platform for the production of power, but without the abrupt comedown of coke, without the hole in your stomach that comes after the effects of crystal have worn off, without the grotesque self-satisfaction triggered by Prozac. There is only one drug like testosterone: heroin. The two drugs are politically dangerous and can lead to exclusion, marginalization, desocialization—and in the case of testosterone, cancer (as is the case for almost all industrial products) as well as hair loss (a lesser disadvantage that you can compensate for with a prosthesis).

I think about taking another dose, the last one—yet again, the last one. Am I going to become a testo-maniac?

Starting with my own experience, with my practice of voluntary hormonal intoxication, I develop a theory (a completely absurd one) about heterosexual attraction. It has always seemed inexplicable to me, since I was a child. Understanding heterosexuality as a technology of “hormonal enrichment,” because my essays are leading me toward such a theory, hardly fascinates me. It is a preposterous hypothesis that reveals something that I find disquieting. What if cis-females known as “heterosexual” were trying to rub shoulders with (cis- or trans-) men to obtain their dose of testosterone from the sweat of their partner? Something as simple as that. Cis-chicks sleeping with (cis- or trans-) guys in order to collect their dose of T, through friction with their skin. That would also explain the progressive masculinization of female sex workers, who develop more facial fuzz than wage-earning cis-females, such as those who work as cashiers at convenience stores.

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