In recent years, society has been challenged about the binary construction of gender identity and sexuality. The rise of the LGBTI community and the increase of media representation have helped to start the dialogue about the third gender – a taboo subject. The movie XXY is an example of a film about intersex people. It was brought to the public eye in 2007 by the debutant film producer and novelist Lucía Puenzo. The plot of the movie was the recreation of one of her husband’s - Sergio Bizzio - a short story titled Cinismo. The movie takes place in costal Uruguay on the frontier with Argentina. The film tells the conflicted life of an intersex person, Alex, who is raised as a girl but with an ambiguous body – hermaphrodite.
Puenzo felt in love of the story from the moment she first read it. She was “especially interested in the dilemma of inevitable choice… having to choose between a binary decision and intersex as an identity and not as a place of mere passage” (Tehrani). She did her research about the…show more content… Her/his parents, Kraken, and Suli, have done their best to raise her far from the public eye as a measure of protection against a resilient society. They came to Uruguay to raise their kid, escaping from the Argentinian medical community who wanted to “normalize” their baby so Alex could live a “normal” life. They were also running away from the ignorants that would not understand the situation. During the entire movie, one character defies society’s dichotomy of gender and her/his struggle can be sensed through her/his way of dressing and behaving. Alex represents the third gender that most people do not understand. She/he is not either male or female, but both in one body. Alex’s body represents a challenge for the community in general. The problem is that society is used to the binary construction of gender and sexuality. A child is born a male or a female, there is no