Issues of Gender Identity and the Emasculation of Men in Fight Club

Prev | Next

Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club addresses issues of gender identity through the portrayal of the unnamed narrator and protagonist who struggles with the ability to reclaim his masculinity in a world overrun by consumerism and capitalism, and “infected” by women. Fight Club addresses the collective struggle faced by men to reclaim their masculinity in American society through the dystopic fantasy of Tyler Durden, the alternative personality of the narrator. The representations of gender identity in Fight Club are problematic because of the way men are characterized as ultra-masculine, in comparison to the misogynistic portrayal of women, who are presented as submissive and targeted as the reason for the emasculation of men. Palahniuk’s novel addresses the troubles and failures of both Tyler’s anarchist fantasy and the narrator’s consumerist based reality, but fails to offer an alternative solution to the issue of male disempowerment.

The novel is told through the perspective of the narrator, who represents the everyday American man, who has become feminized through accepting the notion that masculinity is constructed by consumerism. The narrator finds that he is unhappy with his job and unsatisfied with life. Through his relationship with Tyler Durden and the creation of fight club, bare-knuckle brawling matches, where men “beat their suffering out of each other” (Giroux and Szeman 35), the narrator starts to reclaim his identity and masculinity. Tyler Durden is portrayed as the quintessential male who attempts to construct a utopia for men through railing “against both consumer society and ongoing feminization of men, both of which contribute to men’s feelings of disenfranchisement” (Giroux and Szeman 35). The narrator discovers late in the novel that he and Tyler are the same person, and sees how he has failed to create a utopia and instead has constructed a dystopia where men, “space monkeys,” strive to “hit bottom” to be able to build themselves up and combat “the ongoing feminization of men” (Giroux and Szeman 35) and consumerism to be able to reclaim their gender identity (Palahniuk 67).

In the article “IKEA Boy and the Politics of Male Bonding: Fight Club,” Henry Giroux and Imre Szeman discuss the representation of gender identity in Fight Club and the relationship between consumerism and feminization of men. Giroux and Szeman address how the novel offers a collective solution for men in American society to abolish emasculation, capitalism, and consumerism through a fascist form of rule, advocated by Tyler (35). The article highlights how “Fight Club understands consumerism, which it takes to be the defining problem of contemporary politics, primarily as an attack on masculinity” (Giroux and Szeman 36). It is because of consumerism that the narrator is unable to grasp his masculinity and identity. The narrator elaborates how consumerism is taking over men’s lives and explains, “people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue” (Palahniuk 43). He emphasizes the effects of consumerism through explaining how the things people buy end up “own[ing] you” (Palahniuk 43). Robert Sack further emphasizes in his book, Place, Modernity, and the Consumer’s World how “commodities help us express ourselves” (148). The narrator realizes that he cannot base his masculinity on furniture and embraces Tyler’s theory of gender identity through ridding himself of all possessions and reverting back to primitive forms of masculinity.

The novel compares the narrator and Tyler Durden as two different representations of how consumerism is linked to masculinity. Tyler “exemplifies an embodied masculinity that refuses the seduction of consumerism, while fetishizing products—from soaps to explosives—in a masculinity whose ultimate expression is chaos and destruction” (Giroux and Szeman 37). In contrast, the narrator is a representation of a “domesticated masculinity: passive, alienated, and without ambition” (Giroux and Szeman 37). Tyler Durden’s view of masculinity focuses on its innateness and need to return to a primitive form of manhood. His creation of Project Mayhem is an attempt to “target what Durden sees as central symbols of domesticated masculinity” (Giroux and Szeman 60). Tyler envisions a utopian society where men can “‘[stalk] elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower’” (Palahniuk 125). His primeval representation of masculinity attempts to free men of consumerism through breaking all attachment with physical possessions (Palahniuk 110). Tyler’s view of masculinity can be contrasted to the character Big Bob who shows how men become more feminized through playing into socially constructed representations of masculinity.

In a support group for testicular cancer the narrator meets Big Bob, a representation of how consumerism in America is feminizing men. Big Bob’s feminine exterior, due to testicles being removed and use of steroids, serves as a representation of his failed endeavor to attain masculinity (Palahniuk 17). Big Bob develops “man boobs,” also referred to by the narrator as “bitch tits,” due to high testosterone levels from taking steroids, which represent the physical linkage to his feminization (Palahniuk 21). Big Bob explains that “when you’re pumped and shaved on stage, totally shredded with body fat down to around two percent and the diuretics leave you cold and hard as concrete to touch…. This is better than real life” (Palahniuk 21-22). Big Bob’s obsession with obtaining the perfect body inevitably leads to his descent from masculinity and ascent toward femininity.

In her article, “Performative Acts and gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Judith Butler contends that gender identity is obtained through social constructions and not, as Tyler asserts, through reverting to innate forms of masculinity. Butler explains how “gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding generated self” (519). Butler’s theory refutes Tyler’s view of classical masculinity and claims that gender cannot be understood as a role which either expresses or disguises an interior ‘self,’ whether that ‘self’ is conceived as sexed or not. As performance which is performative, gender is an ‘act,’ broadly constructed which constructs the social fiction of its own psychological interiority” (528). Keith Edwards and Susan Jones also reinforce Butler’s theory that gender is socially constructed in their article “‘Putting My Man Face On’ A Grounded Theory of College Men’s Gender Identity Development.” Edwards and Jones state that gender identity develops “through constant interaction with society’s expectations of [men]…. and social constructions of gender and how it has contributed to women’s subordination and men’s domination” (211). The subordination of women through the machismo of men is most apparent through the portrayal of Marla Singer who is a threat to Tyler’s utopia and the feminization of men.

Marla Singer, the only prominent female character in the novel, is portrayed as the scapegoat for the narrator’s distress, insomnia, and death. Marla embodies all of the negative stereotypes of women and is portrayed as a needy, smoking, and weak individual who represents everything Tyler strives to eradicate. Merely through her presence at different support groups the narrator becomes disoriented, which is a critical factor in the narrator’s unconscious creation of Tyler Durden. The narrator expresses “I know all of this: the gun, the anarchy, the explosion is really about Marla Singer” (Palahniuk 14), but it is not because of love or compassion felt for Marla, but instead the idea of her as property. The relationship between Tyler and Marla is largely sexual. Their relationship is emphasized by Butler’s claim that kinship between men and women is for the purpose of guaranteeing “sexual reproduction” (525), but in this case Marla does not want children and only wants to have an abortion consummated by Tyler (Palahniuk 62). Through keeping their relationship purely sexual, Tyler is able to take advantage of Marla as a way to get revenge on all women for threatening male dominance.

Fight Club maintains that because men have been nurtured by women, primarily mothers, they have become feminized. The absence of father figures in the novel can be attributed to Tyler’s credence that any sort of nurturing is detrimental to the attainment of masculinity. Tyler and the narrator both express a lack of a fatherly guidance while growing up. The narrator describes how his father “starts a new family in a new town about every six years” (Palahniuk 50), which resulted in their aloof relationship. The narrator elaborates how “what you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women” (Palahniuk 50), which is what he and Tyler fight to destroy. Tyler believes that because men are raised by women they are becoming “defined within the spheres of consumerism and domestication that in our patriarchal, bourgeois society have been stereotypically characterized as the realm of the feminine” (Giroux and Szeman 35). It is this feminization through consumerism that is the biggest threat to obtaining masculinity in American society.

Fight Club’s portrayal of Tyler Durden and the narrator serve as representations of the greater struggle faced by men to attain masculinity due to America’s consumerist culture. At the end of the novel the narrator commits suicide in attempt to kill Tyler and his construction of ultra-masculine identity (Palahniuk 205). Palahniuk’s novel serves as a warning to the reader to be cautious of consumerism and capitalism embedded in American society and recognize socially constructed norms that influence gender identity.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No.4 (1988): 519-531. Project Muse. Web. 04 April. 2011.

Davies, Jude and Carol Smith. Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality in Contemporary American Film. George Square, Edinburgh: Keele University Press,1997. Print

Edwards, Keith and Susan Jones. “Putting My Man Face On”: A Grounded Theory of College Men’s Gender Identity Development.” Journal of College Student Development, Volume 50, Number 2 (2009): 210-228. Project Muse. Web. 08 April. 2011.

Giroux, Henry and Imre Szeman. “Ikea Boy and the Politics of Male Bonding: Fight Club, Consumerism, and Violence.” New Art Examiner 28.4 (2000/2001): 33-37, 60-61. Print.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1996. Print.

Sack, Robert D. Place, Modernity, and the Consumer’s World. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Print.