I’m be honest this isn’t really that much of a departure from the actual thrust of the book. Straight guys hiding from their alienation and retreating in to hypermasculine nihilistic violence because of the emptiness of their lives, and how that is ultimately unsatisfying and self destructive, is the core thing being examined in the book. They’ve even got Bob who takes up brutal fighting and ultimately dies, gunned down because he was doing stupid shit to prove his masculinity, all because a medical treatment caused him to grow breasts. The whole book is dripping with the putrified gender of late 90s masculinity. It’s not a trans narrative, but the same events could be interwoven in to a trans narrative very well. I guess you could maybe even phrase it as an evil mirror to trans liberation and gender liberation; cis men so alienated by the failed promises of man-ness that they create a new self-annihilating hyper-male gender that they think will reflect their authentic selves. But because it’s based on reactionary thinking and an unexamined embrace of inherently self-annihilating aspects of late 20th century masculinity, instead of liberating themselves they make something worse and destroy themselves and everyone around them. Like Tyler is the masculine identity Jack/the Narrator thinks he wants, but by the time he realizes how horrible it is he’s already destroyed his life and the people around him and unleashed a societal force of destruction he does not control and that exists beyond him.
it’s not inherently a trans narrative but i definitely resonated in the way of feeling an overwhelming obligation to express the most extreme form of masculinity i could because deep down i felt like a woman and didn’t want anyone to know that. the whole story is kinda about that (minus the woman part, but who knows, right?); the obligation to outwardly display the most toxic form of masculinity they can because they’re surrounded by other men with the same obligation, even though this obligation is total bullshit and leads to horrible things. i wasn’t in an underground-fighting-ring-turned-terrorist-group, but i was around a lot of really toxic men that felt a bit like that.
I’m be honest this isn’t really that much of a departure from the actual thrust of the book. Straight guys hiding from their alienation and retreating in to hypermasculine nihilistic violence because of the emptiness of their lives, and how that is ultimately unsatisfying and self destructive, is the core thing being examined in the book. They’ve even got Bob who takes up brutal fighting and ultimately dies, gunned down because he was doing stupid shit to prove his masculinity, all because a medical treatment caused him to grow breasts. The whole book is dripping with the putrified gender of late 90s masculinity. It’s not a trans narrative, but the same events could be interwoven in to a trans narrative very well. I guess you could maybe even phrase it as an evil mirror to trans liberation and gender liberation; cis men so alienated by the failed promises of man-ness that they create a new self-annihilating hyper-male gender that they think will reflect their authentic selves. But because it’s based on reactionary thinking and an unexamined embrace of inherently self-annihilating aspects of late 20th century masculinity, instead of liberating themselves they make something worse and destroy themselves and everyone around them. Like Tyler is the masculine identity Jack/the Narrator thinks he wants, but by the time he realizes how horrible it is he’s already destroyed his life and the people around him and unleashed a societal force of destruction he does not control and that exists beyond him.
it’s not inherently a trans narrative but i definitely resonated in the way of feeling an overwhelming obligation to express the most extreme form of masculinity i could because deep down i felt like a woman and didn’t want anyone to know that. the whole story is kinda about that (minus the woman part, but who knows, right?); the obligation to outwardly display the most toxic form of masculinity they can because they’re surrounded by other men with the same obligation, even though this obligation is total bullshit and leads to horrible things. i wasn’t in an underground-fighting-ring-turned-terrorist-group, but i was around a lot of really toxic men that felt a bit like that.