As you read each thesis, consider:
- What main points would you expect the rest of the paper to cover?
- Which stories would you guess the writer might use as support?
- Does the thesis seem appropriate for a relatively short essay?
(1) The need to maintain the gender binary leads to treatments for intersexed people that are meant to make them “normal,” but these treatments end up being far more harmful than helpful.
(2) The social need to place intersexed people into the category of one sex or the other can have surprisingly negative consequences on their health, sexual responsiveness, and sense of self.
(3) Because intersex people may not identify with either sex, they complicate our understanding sexual orientation.
(4) This binary view of gender is based on language that doesn’t allow for the possibility of ways of being that extend beyond a man or a woman.
(5) Those who fall outside of the gender binary are often subject to constant scrutiny by others who want to place them neatly in the “male” or “female” box.
(6) The gender binary leaves no room for people whose sex, gender identity, and gender expression don’t line up as expected.
(7) Those whose gender expression doesn’t match their physical sex are considered deviant and abnormal, when the gender binary system itself is the source of the problem.
(8) Because of this rigid two-gender system, we often have a hard time understanding the identities of those who straddle the gender lines.