Wait a minute - you would, if faced by a woman telling you that you’re wrong about what it feels like to be kicked in the balls, believe that her imagination amounts to a valid contribution, and may in fact be more accurate (or at least a valuable interpretation – of an experience she has never had and CAN never have) than your own personal experience?
So, DOES it hurt to be kicked in the balls? Because…I kicked someone in the balls once, and it clearly didn’t hurt very much.
Just because something is happening to you, doesn’t make you an expert in it. In fact, being in the center of something often results in distorted viewpoints and attitudes. An outside viewpoint is generally welcome to those with an open mind. It’why we hire coaches and business consultants.
With serious consideration, I am not sure the sensation of getting kicked in the balls is so unique. Do you think that evolution bothered to create a specific painful sensation and just put it on the Y chromosome? You think women don’t feel that. Pain sensations are not really all that different depending on what part of the body they are on. The type of pain I get from a ball kick is pretty analogous to the type of pain I got when I bruised a kidney, except the kidney was a lot worse. It was also pretty similar in feel to what happened when I messed up my knee. I would not be surprised if women feel the exact same pain if you pinch them in the ovaries or poke them in the cervix.
I think it is pretty asinine to assume that my having testicles somehow makes my experiences unique in some way that women can’t possible comprehend and therefore have no business discussing, and that they are somehow committing some sort of heinous crime of insensitivity if they dare to venture one. Our bodies are all made of flesh, and pain is felt in the brain. While we all vary male and female within certain bounds, I think it is the height of egotistic thinking to consider that your experiences and feelings are unique, or even all that uncommon. I am quite sure that your average female human being has enough intellectual horsepower to grasp the concept, the essential nut if you will, of getting kicked in the balls.
And yes, I guess the opposite is true. I will nod my head in sage agreement and sympathy when my wife informs me that I could never possibly comprehend what it means and feels like to get PMS. I do this out do polite sympathy and tact. Internally though, I roll my eyes. I have understood the quadratic equation, grappled with quantum physics, contemplated the great questions of life. I have travelled a portion of the world read many books and experiences wildly significant and incredibly mundane. I have held the world in my hand, like a pretty as if to admire its veining, I’ve run marathons, had my heart broken, loved, suffered third degree burns, etc etc etc.
I think I can wrap my skull around PMS.
So yes, let’s face the facts. There is nothing really special about balls, no matter men may pretend.
To answer your other question, how much it hurts depends on how hard and how squarely they are kicked. Hitting ones head on the sharp edge of a cabinet is generally more painful and debilitating.
I could go on and on, (and see that I have,) Marvin Minsky in his fantastic book Society of Mind does a pretty good job explaining about how most of what we actually think we feel is just built out of expectations of what we think we will feel.
So again, Testicular sensations, not so special.
Fair enough, and well explained. thank you. I have been poked in the cervix, and my reaction was fleeting. Not fun, but in no way similar to a man who has crumpled due to a well-aimed and hearty foot in the testicles. I have had various manipulations of my girl-parts due to medical necessity - and the pain was dissimilar, in my own view, to other types of pain. Not at all similar, in my experience, to sharply hitting my head (and I have done that often enough).
It’s possible, as I have heard, that the most similar pain to childbirth for a man, for instance, is a passing a kidney stone. Women who have experienced both have said that there is a certain degree of similarity there. I don’t know. I would not tell a mother what her birth pangs feel like; I would not lecture someone on what it feels like to pass a stone; I would not tell a man what it feels like to be kicked in the balls. I have had none of those experiences. Reading a book does not equal actual experience, and I would be offended by someone who has never had a particular experience telling me what it’s REALLY like to have that experience. Remember, in the hypothetical, the woman is not “venturing an opinion” on testicular pain; she is telling the men what it’s actually like.
You have travelled, as you say- would you listen to someone who has never been to your country telling you what it is REALLY like? He or she may have read extensively, but that person is telling you, a native, that you are *wrong *about your experiences. Not simply sharing an opinion or a perspective-- straight up telling you that you are mistaken about your own life.
But not completely unknown in the past. The ur-manspreader, from 1940s New York. Hey, there’s a gender-neutral term: space hog, or maybe seat hog if we don’t want to create a mental image of a Muppets skit. 
When I take the train to work, I’m apparently on one of the most crowded train lines in England (Weymouth to Waterloo on Southwest Trains – some of the peak time trains run at 150% capacity).
My pet peeve are the businessmen who sit on an aisle seat and put their cases and bags on the window seat, and then refuse to move or make eye contact with anyone boarding, even though the train is madly crowded, and people are jammed into the aisles and by the doors. That and the feral school and college [ie 14-16 year olds] kids who will take up several seats with their junk or by putting their feet up on the seats, and then hassle anyone who tries to sit down.
Still maintaining my American DNA at these moments, I will ask them to move their stuff so that I can sit down, but sheesh.
Using a gender neutral term would imply that both sexes are equally likely to engage in the sport.
The one and only time I saw a girl sit like that on a subway, she was smiling impishly at a friend and not wearing any underwear. Which is a rather narrow and specific context ;).
Manspreading comes in two forms, and only one of them is something with a female analog.
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Manspreading and taking over empty seats is rude and analogous to anybody, man or woman, taking up space where somebody could be sitting. IMHO, this is aggravating and irritating, the exact same way that somebody putting their bags on a seat is.
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Manspreading and taking over space somebody else is occupying is aggressive. When this happens to me, I feel like the person doing it is making some sort of power play. The man pictured absolutely knows that he is making physical contact; he *likely *knows that the woman is uncomfortable and that he is taking up her space, but he does not care - or, even worse, enjoys it. There is not a common female analog to this move.
meh. We all forget small courtesies on occasion. But if you want to make a great social movement out of people not stepping to the right on escalators and old ladies putting their bags on the seat beside them. Then by all means go for it. Or in fact, fucking don’t.
Don’t know about your area, but here, phones or portable speakers are filling the noise pollution niche once occupied by boomboxes. Apparently, keeping one’s music to oneself is too civilized to bother with.
Yeah, “forget small courtesies on occasion”, that’s the ticket.
Dude, just own it. If you want other people’s space you take it up, and force them to confront you about it if they want it back. And it works particularly well on women, because they tend to be more reluctant to confront an unknown man. Which is obviously their fault, right?
Although I take the tube every day, I have a very moderate view on this: these people should be hanged.
Judging by the smirk, I’m guessing the one sitting near the Queen did that on purpose.
Yes, it’s their fault. But let me spell it out for you then. Sitting with your legs spread out when there’s not a lack of space for other people to sit: double plus neutral; Sitting with your legs spread out when there’s a lack of space for other people to sit, or your crowding their space: double plus bad.
Yes of course, but that’s hardly a social movment is it. The fact that most of the ills of modern society can be boiled down to not nearly enough people are getting hanged by vigilant mobs is merely common sense.