Python `module.rst` top-level section headers get eaten by Sphinx

I'm not sure what I'm doing differently (as I'm sure this would've been spotted by someone else much sooner), but top-level section headers are being swallowed by Sphinx. Combined with the fact that this also happens when parsing rst syntax in docstrings, I believe I've tracked it down to:

@shimizukawa in https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/632#issuecomment-68563233:

From Georg Brandl on 2011-09-22 12:21:02+00:00

Your index.rst doesn't have a title, right? Basically Sphinx gobbles up the most toplevel title (which is then replaced by the
document frontmatter).

I've been able to fix it with a hack where I add a dummy title (which, due to the above behavior, won't be rendered) to a local modules.rst template.

While this works, I'm curious as to why I'm the only one experiencing this issue and whether a better solution exists!

Start with the local modules.rst template and reproduce the swallowed top-level section headers, including rst syntax in docstrings. Read the referenced Sphinx issue for context and trace how the generated documentation handles the document's top-level title. Done means legitimate section headers render without requiring a dummy title.