Brújula Intersexual: Working Strategies, the Emergence of the Mexican Intersex Community, and Its Relationship with the Intersex Movement
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article deals with an important issue of intersex movement in Latin America and how it is connected with the world movement. I can see the authors incentive to delienate between Spanish speaking and English speaking scholarship and activism and highlight the impact of Brújula Intersexual on Spanish speaking countries.
However, the article needs more work to be clear, explicit and useful for the scholarship:
1) The authors might start with the title and keywords to make them more cohesive, clear and reflecting the main idea of the article;
2) The authors might revisit their research design, so far it seemed pretty mixed between qualitative and quantitative methods. I can see that quantitative methods are employed for the review, but in this design I would recommend to focus on what makes Brújula Intersexual a significant study object and how this particular design contribute to dealing with the RQs on p. 4;
3) The authors should also revisit their overall structure: again, it is a bit of a mix of explanations for the graphs and contents of the resource - I can see how they link, but very loosely. A tighter structure can make it clearer.
4) part 3.3. should probably be the central part and the authors might work from it - the subheadings are a bit misleading, but again voices from the resource might be the base for the more nuanced qualitative analysis;
5) In Conclusions the authors introduce yet again new approach: it is better to avoid it or introduce it in the research design to make their argument more cohesive. It makes sense, but not at the end of the article.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguagePlease, do the language check again, there are some issues with contents and terminology.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for reading our paper and for your comments. We have reviewed the article carefully and applied the following changes, which we have highlighted in yellow in our paper:
- The title, the abstract and the keywords were modified and re-organised to reflect the main idea of the article properly.
- The study design was revisited and re-organised. We clarified that our study is qualitative-quantitative, since the quantitative data we collected was essential to understand Brújula Intersexual’s regional and global outreach. We consider that having a design that provides quantitative and qualitative data is a strength of the article, that is why we decided to keep the graphs and the tables. In this sense and to facilitate reading, we decided to eliminate the questions that were on page 4.
- We revisited the overall structure and re-organised it.
- We re-organised the Results and Discussion section and focused on part 3.3, which we have placed at the beginning of the section, becoming part 3.1. Part of the discussion was re-written to highlight Brújula Intersexual’s operating mechanism.
- The conclusion was re-written.
In addition, our article has been sent for revision to MDPI.
Thank you again for your time and comments.
Sincerely,
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsYou start your piece with a very clearly articulated set of 4 questions that you were using to guide your enquiries. Your discussion and conclusions sections seemed to lose sight of these questions. The overall coherence across the piece would be strengthened were you to ensure these questions are used as a point of orientation for your discussions throughout.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.
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Comments 1: You start your piece with a very clearly articulated set of 4 questions that you were using to guide your enquiries. Your discussion and conclusions sections seemed to lose sight of these questions. The overall coherence across the piece would be strengthened were you to ensure these questions are used as a point of orientation for your discussions throughout. |
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Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have reviewed the article carefully and took the set of four questions as an orientation point during the revision of the overall coherence. In this sense, we applied the following changes:
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4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language |
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Point 1: (x) English language fine. No issues detected |
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We sent our article for revision to the MDPI service. |
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis is an improved version but still lacks in proper contextualization in scholarship. I guess the authors have done what they think they could but from my point of view the state of art on intersex studies can be better.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe authors need to do a proper language check: either copyedit or language revision
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1, Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.
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Comments 1: Round 1: The authors might start with the title and keywords to make them more cohesive, clear and reflecting the main idea of the article; |
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Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. The title, the abstract and the keywords were modified and re-organised to reflect the main idea of the article properly in consonance with the four research questions, two of which were also re-articulated. |
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Comments 2: Round 1: The authors might revisit their research design, so far it seemed pretty mixed between qualitative and quantitative methods. I can see that quantitative methods are employed for the review, but in this design, I would recommend to focus on what makes Brújula Intersexual a significant study object and how this particular design contribute to dealing with the RQs on p. 4 |
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Response 2: Thank you for pointing this out. We have, accordingly, revisited and re-organised the study design to emphasize this point. We clarified that our study is qualitative-quantitative, since the quantitative data we collected was essential to understand Brújula Intersexual’s regional and global outreach. We consider that having a design that provides quantitative and qualitative data is a strength of the article, that is why we decided to keep the graphs and the tables. In this sense and to facilitate reading, we decided to eliminate the questions that were on page 4. |
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Comments 3: Round 1: The authors should also revisit their overall structure: again, it is a bit of a mix of explanations for the graphs and contents of the resource - I can see how they link, but very loosely. A tighter structure can make it clearer. |
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Response 3: Thank you for pointing this out. We have, accordingly, revisited and re-organised the overall structure. We re-organised the Results and Discussion section and re-wrote the conclusions in order to match the questions and the main objectives of the article. |
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Comments 4: Round 1: part 3.3. should probably be the central part and the authors might work from it - the subheadings are a bit misleading, but again voices from the resource might be the base for the more nuanced qualitative analysis; |
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Response 4: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. We re-organised the Results and Discussion section and focused on part 3.3, which we have placed at the beginning of the section, becoming part 3.1. Part of the discussion was re-written to highlight Brújula Intersexual’s operating mechanism. |
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Comments 5: Round 1: In Conclusions the authors introduce yet again new approach: it is better to avoid it or introduce it in the research design to make their argument more cohesive. It makes sense, but not at the end of the article. |
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Response 5: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we re-wrote the Conclusions. |
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Comments 6: Round 2: This is an improved version but still lacks in proper contextualization in scholarship. I guess the authors have done what they think they could but from my point of view the state of art on intersex studies can be better. |
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Response 6: Thank you for pointing this out. However, the contextualization is limited to what has happened and is happening in Latin America, as well as the state of art on intersex studies. At this moment, we do not have space for a state of art in intersex studies that cover other regions as 1) that is beyond the objectives of our article and 2) the length of the article is limited to 10,000 words. |
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4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language |
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Point 1: Comments on the Quality of English Language Please, do the language check again, there are some issues with contents and terminology. Round 2: The authors need to do a proper language check: either copyedit or language revision |
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Response 1: We sent our article for revision to the MDPI service. |
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5. Additional clarifications |
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Thank you for all your comments. |
