...some random answerings...

(*What timing for this deadline, having just gotten my period… Though that’s not what prompts me to write. My "time-of-the-month" comes and goes…there’s a trail of blood… no one knows… I don’t obsess, I don’t pms… I’m lucky I suppose. The occurrence is of no consequence in the physical realm, though it provides plenty on which to reflect. I am skimming over, in this write, some obvious issues associated with this theme: Is menstruation a curse? Why do “civilized” women particularly suffer it? Why is childbirth easier for “primitive women” than for modern ones? I’m skipping over these questions to examine the strange coupling of male / female inquiries offered in the challenge question itself. I hope no one will interpret it as a personal affront… I take this as it is: an opportunity for further examining various lines of thinking… particularly those appearing to be seeped in misandry/ misogyny.)

The Challenge prompts us to consider extremes of pain, segregated by gender experience. I immediately pause at the psychological aspect of it, the whole context… The incidents proffered have very different bases. While a comparison is not being “asked for,” it is implicitly already drawn! The suggestion being that for each party, the worst possible gender-specific pain is to be imagined… For men, selected is not just an assault against their person, but against “manhood.” For women, the pain is of an internal biological nature. It is not an act of violence in-and-of-itself, but rather forbearance, tied in with considerable social esteem… although the contempt/ sense of punishment, which women tend to attribute to it may make it seem like an assault even though it obviously isn’t one.

Somehow this seemingly non-confrontational challenge manages to irk me terribly, raising the specters of serious underlying problems in our society pertaining to male/female inequity. I note an in-between-the-lines narrative that forms in the framing of the challenge: …Ladies, describe menstruation and/or the Pain of childbirth; Gents describe what it feels like when someone kicks you in the source of that pro-genitive Pain.