Fifty shades of pain - Telegraph It could be one giant leap for man, and more particularly womankind. As we report today, medical researchers have begun to develop techniques that may, eventually, enable doctors objectively to assess the pain their patients feel. This will in turn lead to a carefully calibrated method for conversion between the two incommensurable scales of unpleasant sensation currently employed by the two sexes. If the female scale has, let us say, 50 shades, the male has, according to opinion polls, at least twice as many. It appears that approximately 75 on the masculine scale - an intense agony only kept at bay by complete immobility - corresponds to about 14 or 15 on the feminine scale, a mild discomfort readily controlled with half a Nurofen. Well, before too long doctors will be able to sort out the inevitable confusions that arise from these different systems of measurement. Then, approximately one half of our readership can be confident that suspicions sometimes nursed by the other approximate half, that they are feeble malingerers, will be put to rest, and the term "man flu" will disappear from the language.