Paul Preciado

Early Life
Paul B. Preciado, originally born, Beatriz Preciado, was born in Spain in 1970. Preciado attended The New School, in New York for
philosophy, where he met Jaqcues Derrida, a controversial philosopher who
became a mentor and provided various opportunities which influenced Preciado’s
life monumentally. One such opportunity was when Derrida invited Preciado to
teach a seminar in Paris where he resided for another ten years. In 2015 Preciado began asking friends to refer to him as Paul.  
Pharmapornagraphic Regime
In his book, Testo Junkie, Preciado explores the different
controlling factors of society. Most prominent is the ‘Pharmapornagraohic
Regime’ which aims to control the body on a molecular level. This is
accomplished through the normalization of taking pills regardless of their usefulness.
This can be illustrated through the mass consumption of birth control pills to
regulate hormones for purposes beyond contraceptive factors. This ideology inspired
an inverse experiment by Preciado; taking testosterone recreationally. The implications
of taking a drug intended to alter your hormones is a focus of Preciado’s
analysis. He questions why it can be assumed that there is any one hormonal
balance that categorizes a person’s gender as male or female.            
Publications            
Manifesto Contrasexual
Published in 2002, in Spanish, this book is a work on contemporary
feminism and transgender and queer politics. 
Testo Junkie
Perhaps Preciado’s most well known work, Testo Junkie
chronicles Preciado’s journey into the world of testosterone usage. The book
questions the social construct of gender as a binary through the process of
altering one’s hormones despite their sex. Testo Junkie was originally
published in 2008 in Spanish, then again, in 2013 in English.
Pornutopia
In this book, published in 2014, Preciado explores the effect of Playboy
Magazine as an influence on a new way of thinking and living with the
influences of architecture and pornography as well as the oral contraceptive
pill.            
Influence
For the many years the Paul B. Preciado has been contributing his thoughts and experiences to society, he has been a strong
influence on pushing people to question what they consider gender to be. By
defying the binary and implementing his own ‘gender hacking’ techniques as discussed
in “Testo Junkie”, Preciado provides a basis for a new way to think about and
analyze gender.            
Sources  
https://www.vice.com/sv/article/ppvx38/beatriz-preciado-testo-junkie-interview-199
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/11/guardianobituaries.france
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/12/04/pharmacopornography-an-interview-with-beatriz-preciado/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hmJr3iBr48
http://www.liberation.fr/chroniques/2015/01/16/catalogne-trans_1182248
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/44/60141/testo-junkie-sex-drugs-and-biopolitics/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/843397808X
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/pornotopia  
Category:Early Life