To men who still want ‘proof’ of women’s pain: be careful what you wish for | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

A UK school's botched plan to require a doctor's note for period pain shows we're still not trusted over our own suffering

How's your pain threshold? For a few months now, I've been obsessively watching videos of men trying period pain simulators. The machines have wired abdominal pads that send electrical impulses controlled by a console that can replicate the ferocity of cramps on a range of one to 10. Often by five or six on the dial, men are groaning or even screaming in agony while their female partners, also hooked up to the machine, sit unfazed.

Like many, many women, I am habituated to a certain level of pain. From girlhood, we go about our lives in varying levels of agony, often with the people around us knowing little of our discomfort. There are days, though, when it all becomes too much. It used to be that all you had to do was vaguely mention women's problems" to be granted some respite. Not so any more, at least in some schools.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

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