My theory is that people who have had to deal with neither menstrual cramps (let alone childbirth) nor the various trials of gender affirming treatments are a lot less likely to have had extensive periods of just having to deal with pain for a long time. Like, maybe they’ve had some injuries, or other brief episodes, but unless they have some other condition like chronic migraines, I think a lot of able-bodied cis men haven’t had to regularly sit with pain and just deal with it.
It’s understandable that this would happen, but extremely frustrating when somehow that becomes the default cultural view and condescending cis men in positions of power get to smugly decide that they’re manly men with great pain tolerance and anyone who complains about pain is surely just being a baby/whiny hysterical woman.
(There is also absolutely a racialized component here where Black and brown folks tend to receive fewer painkillers, which this doesn’t really account for, but this is not meant to be a comprehensive explanation of disparities in pain management in health care, just my theorizing why cis men on average seem to have lower rates of pain tolerance.)
I had a TENs machine. I also have endometriosis (after suffering for over 20 years found a surgeon willing to do surgery, gods bless her for giving me a chance to live). When I was still with my ex I used it as a simulator to try to show him what my pain felt like. He was on the floor screaming and couldn’t straighten his legs or stand up because of the pain and I was just standing there chilling and hadn’t even hit the lowest threshold of my normal everyday pain limit, let alone the pain I felt when I had my period. I was like now do you understand why I’m exhausted and depressed all the time and hate my life?
There is a portion of the population for whom fairly intense pain is not a “when that happened to me” but a “when that happens to me” and it just really results in developing a pain tolerance skill that I don’t think those for whom pain is understood as the occasional discrete injury really get. There are conditions that can cause that to happen to cis men, but it’s less common than for, uh, the entire rest of the population, and so fewer of them have had to develop that skill.
(Also, really glad you were finally able to get the surgery to help!)
My theory is that people who have had to deal with neither menstrual cramps (let alone childbirth) nor the various trials of gender affirming treatments are a lot less likely to have had extensive periods of just having to deal with pain for a long time. Like, maybe they’ve had some injuries, or other brief episodes, but unless they have some other condition like chronic migraines, I think a lot of able-bodied cis men haven’t had to regularly sit with pain and just deal with it.
It’s understandable that this would happen, but extremely frustrating when somehow that becomes the default cultural view and condescending cis men in positions of power get to smugly decide that they’re manly men with great pain tolerance and anyone who complains about pain is surely just being a baby/whiny hysterical woman.
(There is also absolutely a racialized component here where Black and brown folks tend to receive fewer painkillers, which this doesn’t really account for, but this is not meant to be a comprehensive explanation of disparities in pain management in health care, just my theorizing why cis men on average seem to have lower rates of pain tolerance.)
I had a TENs machine. I also have endometriosis (after suffering for over 20 years found a surgeon willing to do surgery, gods bless her for giving me a chance to live). When I was still with my ex I used it as a simulator to try to show him what my pain felt like. He was on the floor screaming and couldn’t straighten his legs or stand up because of the pain and I was just standing there chilling and hadn’t even hit the lowest threshold of my normal everyday pain limit, let alone the pain I felt when I had my period. I was like now do you understand why I’m exhausted and depressed all the time and hate my life?
Yeah, that tracks.
There is a portion of the population for whom fairly intense pain is not a “when that happened to me” but a “when that happens to me” and it just really results in developing a pain tolerance skill that I don’t think those for whom pain is understood as the occasional discrete injury really get. There are conditions that can cause that to happen to cis men, but it’s less common than for, uh, the entire rest of the population, and so fewer of them have had to develop that skill.
(Also, really glad you were finally able to get the surgery to help!)