Alex is intersexual. A hermaphrodite. An individual whose existence confuses the world's fastidious divisions of male and female. One baby in every two thousand is of ambiguous gender. In Alex' case, when he was two years old. doctors recommended the use of surgery to correct his natural aberration. After plastic surgeons had amputated his penis and testicles and created a vagina, Alex grew up in his small village as a girl who wears size XXL.
Octopus alarm is how Alex describes the stressful situations in which, as a 14-year-old, she was obliged to try and fend off foraging boys' hands. Her first sexual encounters were always suffused with great anxiety that her "otherness" could be exposed.
