What would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?
The answer is clear: menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event ... Men would brag1 about how long and how much.
Boys would mark the onset2 of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties.
Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea to help stamp out monthly discomforts3.
Sanitary4 supplies would be federally funded and free.
Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation as proof that only men could serve in the army , occupy political office , be priests and ministers , or rabbis .
Male radicals7, left-wing politicians, and mystics, however, would insist that women are equal, just different; and that any woman could enter their ranks if only she were willing to self-inflict a major wound every month , recognize the preeminence8 of menstrual issues, or subordinate her selfness to all men in their Cycle of Enlightenment.
Street guys would brag or answer praise from a buddy9 by high-fiving and saying, Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!
TV shows would treat the subject at length. So would newspapers. And movies.
Men would try to convince women that intercourse10 was more pleasurable at that time of the month.
Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself - though probably only because they needed a good menstruating man.
Of course, male intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguments. How could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics, or measurement, for instance, without that in-built gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets - and thus for measuring anything at all? In the rarefied fields of philosophy and religion, could women compensate11 for missing the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic12 death-and-resurrection every month?
Liberal males in every field would be kind to women: the fact that these people have no gift for measuring life or connecting the universe, the liberals would explain, that should be punishment enough. ...