by Roger Ebert Alex was born with both male and female sex organs. Although "reassignment" surgery was considered after birth, she has lived as a woman until the age of 15, when "XXY" takes up the story. She uses hormones to subdue her male characteristics, but now she has become unsure how she really feels. Alex is neither a man in a woman's body, nor a woman in a man's body, but both, in the body of a high-spirited tomboy who broods privately in uncertainty and confusion.