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Though a biological characteristic, menstruation is also a complex social construction, one that men play an active role in creating via a process of "menstrual transactions." This book explores the means by which menstruation is given meaning through an examination of a wide variety of such transactions.

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What´s with the men in menstruation? This is the question Men in Menstruation: A Social Transaction sets out to answer. From earliest times men have been puzzled and perplexed by the menstrual cycle and have constructed elaborate taboos, superstitions, and practices attempting to explain why women have a periodical emission of a fluid that resembles blood but is not the result of an injury or affliction. In other words, men want to know why it is possible to bleed and not die. In order to understand what goes on between men and women in the presence of menstruation, this book examines a variety of encounters, referred to as "menstrual transactions." From the three women in the Bible who are identified as menstruating to contemporary films, advertising, TV programs and literature, the book explores a wide range of transactions, even including Prince Charles´s close encounter of a menstrual kind. The book will appeal to anyone interested in gaining insights into the mystery of menstruation as well as students of gender and women´s studies or media theory and history.

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Acknowledgments - Introduction: Menses and Me - The Menstrual Transaction - Blood in the Bible, Torah, and Quran and How Jesus Became a Menstrual Hero - A Royal Menstrual Pain: Prince Charles and the Tampon Scandal - The Literary Period: Sightings, Sex, and Dystopian Visions - Seeing Red on TV: Archie Bunker´s Dilemma - Blood on the Screen: Menstrual Features - Selling the Product: Men in Menstrual Marketing - Making Menstrual Music: Singing the Menstrual Blues - Menstrual Mischief and Transgressions - Random Menstrual Moments - Conclusion: Men in the Emerging Menstrual Ecology - Index.

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"In a tour de force, David Linton explores the presence (and absence) of menstruation in both high and low culture. Linton´s comprehensive and witty examination of men´s reactions to menstruation in daily life, as well as in various forms of media, is a capstone of his thirty years of scholarly work on the topic. I can recommend this entertaining and accessible book to a broad range of readers with interests in popular culture, sex education, and gender and women´s studies." -Joan C. Chrisler, Editor of Women´s Reproductive Health

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