Menstrual blood and the scene of a crime

In feminine product advertisements, menstruation blood is that which cannot be seen to be seen. An advertisement on Australian television suggests a possible semiotic link between menstrual blood and the blood trace of murder. The commercial implicates the viewer in the narrative as a detective able to reconstruct the missed scene of an apparent crime. This paper explores various links between menstruation, murder and transgressions of law. Taking up Luce lrigaray 's interpretation of patriarchy as the law of the father, it argues that the hiding of menstrual blood represses a debt to the maternal. The sight of menstrual blood is a guilty reminder of this debt which exposes the murderous fiction of paternal autogenesis. It is argued that this repression is a moral blind spot and guilty blood trace which the law of the father institutes and enforces. The symbolic richness of this advertisement potentially subverts and exposes a patriarchal economy of blood debts and primal crimes.