Among the things that are going on here is that for the physically fit, which tends to include self-righteous doctors, pain is something you choose, and something that you wear as a badge of your hard work keeping your body healthy (yeah, right). When I hung out with (male) runners, many of them seemed to be happy only when they had some borderline injury they were tending.

So someone who doesn't choose pain, whose body just inflicts it on them, must either have made some terrible choice in the past, or must be broken in kinds of way that many doctors don't want to deal with.

And meanwhile this is what, 20 years after serious talk about pain management started in the lay press?