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The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

nature.com

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Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#101

Post by vanderZwan »

elil17 wrote: post #90

Obviously these things are highly individual, but my personal experience totally aligns with this article. I’m a transgender woman and when I started taking estrogen my pain tolerance increased noticeably over the course of about a month. Stubbing my toe just doesn’t bother me like it used to

I wonder if this knowledge can be used "in reverse", like testing for both pain pathways to determine one's biological sex in a less binary way. Perhaps that would give a better indication of which type of treatments will work best on an individual level, even beyond just pain relief.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#102

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

dTal wrote: post #96
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's basically the same answer you'd get about slavery from a slave owner. I don't think it is a good argument.

Nevertheless, it's probably true. It's wishful thinking to hope that morality can be put on any firmer ground than "what humans intuitively feel, as a consequence of millions of years of ultimately self-centred evolution". The moment your more-perfect moral framework disagrees with intuition, it will be discarded.

I find it difficult to respect that opinion, because it seems to me it is just an excuse not to try.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#104

Post by Konnstann »

kranner wrote: post #54
JamesBarney wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is literally our choice. Human volunteers as first test subjects or animals. There aren't any other choices besides putting drug research in stasis.

Fair enough. Humans can at least give consent, in a way (given that economic necessity is not consensual).

So every toxicology study will need to be postponed until we find 100 people willing to die for no reason? Oh and all of those people need to be part of the representative population the drug is being developed for.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#106

Post by mcv »

fifnir wrote: post #93
mcv wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that. No other animal menstruates quite like humans do either; there's been an arms race between the placenta and the womb, and rather than a safe place to protect the fetus, the womb is more of a safe place to isolate the fetus and manage its access to the mother's resources while keeping the mother safe. Human pregnancy is messed up beyond the obvious issue of squeezing our large brain through out narrow r…

> an arms race between the placenta and the womb, and rather than a safe place to protect the fetus, the womb is more of a safe place to isolate the fetus and manage its access to the mother's resources while keeping the mother safe. I don't see anything human-specific here, this would have been true for all placental animals no?

It doesn't sound inherently human-specific, but somehow it is. Well, other primates have it to a lesser extent, but other placental mammals don't, and we have it worse than other primates. Why only primates have this arms race between placenta and womb, and why humans have it worse than any primate, I don't know. But it's definitely a thing. It's the reason why humans menstruate while non-primate mammals don't.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#107

Post by [deleted] »

foldr wrote: post #97
insickness wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> another example of political correctness It's also the opposite. There's a strain of far left ideology that claims men and women are mentally identical, despite much scientific evidence to the contrary. If they were identical, studies on both genders would be unnecessary.

>There's a strain of far left ideology that claims men and women are mentally identical I've never seen anyone actually claim this. Often, people on the right want people on the left to be claiming this because it would be easy to refute. But in fact what people on the left are usually doing is expressing skepticism that various aspects of the status quo (such as the distribution of genders in various professions) ar…

[deleted]

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#108

Post by Raphmedia »

elil17 wrote: post #90

Obviously these things are highly individual, but my personal experience totally aligns with this article. I’m a transgender woman and when I started taking estrogen my pain tolerance increased noticeably over the course of about a month. Stubbing my toe just doesn’t bother me like it used to

(I'm also a transgender woman.)

It seems like different kinds of pain affect me differently.

Stubbing my toes or getting slapped has never been painful to me, but I've had messed up hormone levels all my life. This seem to have stayed the same.

The pains from doing exercises really lowered. Muscle cramps after going to the gyms are much more easier to ignore.

However I've noticed that since my main hormone is estrogen other kinds of pain are really painful. Cold hurts a lot, to the point where I had to change my winter wardrobe. I've also noticed that the pain that comes from laser hair removal also increased but that may be due to the skin getting thinner and more sensitive.

There's definitively more of an emotional weight to pain now. Stubbing my toes will make me very angry, tripping might make me sad, etc. Before my transition, it was all the same annoying dull emotion of "ow, I'm in pain". Sometimes, I carry the emotional pain a bit longer than the physical pain. Reliving that same emotion later can bring back the physical pain.

Hormones are fun!

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#109

Post by Raphmedia »

vanderZwan wrote: post #101
elil17 wrote: post #90

Obviously these things are highly individual, but my personal experience totally aligns with this article. I’m a transgender woman and when I started taking estrogen my pain tolerance increased noticeably over the course of about a month. Stubbing my toe just doesn’t bother me like it used to

I wonder if this knowledge can be used "in reverse", like testing for both pain pathways to determine one's biological sex in a less binary way. Perhaps that would give a better indication of which type of treatments will work best on an individual level, even beyond just pain relief.

While those kind of research help show that gender and sex are on a spectrum and not binaries, I really doubt that you could use this to accurately pinpoint someone on it.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#110

Post by fifnir »

mcv wrote: post #106
fifnir wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an arms race between the placenta and the womb, and rather than a safe place to protect the fetus, the womb is more of a safe place to isolate the fetus and manage its access to the mother's resources while keeping the mother safe. I don't see anything human-specific here, this would have been true for all placental animals no?

It doesn't sound inherently human-specific, but somehow it is. Well, other primates have it to a lesser extent, but other placental mammals don't, and we have it worse than other primates. Why only primates have this arms race between placenta and womb, and why humans have it worse than any primate, I don't know. But it's definitely a thing. It's the reason why humans menstruate while non-primate mammals don't.

Interesting, I did some more digging and found this for anyone interested in a nice paper:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5121266/

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