I've wondered about the term 'pain tolerance'. What does it mean? Here are some possibilities:
1. Pain that can be withstood before unconsciousness takes over. Presumably empirical studies (even if only obserrvational rather than empirical) can be carried out, and may have been, already. Any thoughts?
2. Subjective - individual's willingness to 'carry on' in a painful situation. This, however, need not tell us anything about the individual's physiology ("women have higher pain tolerance levels - it comes form hormones"-style mewage) but from cultutral and other conditioning. For instance, if men gave birth, and suckled, wouldn't it be true to say that women would suffer from the feelings of jealousy, and alienation, that fathers often go through - no longer being the most important person in the household, not able to create that 'mystical' mother-child bond that seems to occur so regularly, and so on. Further, if men were privy to such a bond (and yes, the 'magic' of giving birth and seeing something come alive that has grown inside you for all these months), what's to say that, no matter how painful, they wouldn't want to go through it again?
IMO, until we have a few real life Tiresias', the entire question is a moot one - particularly when it comes to the pain of childbirth and 'my pain is bigger than your pain' comparisons.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
