Fight Club Female-style

Though Fight Club has an odd storyline, I believe that there is a way that the book could become even more abnormal. All of the male roles could become female roles, and all of the female roles could become male roles. Just imagine, a group of women secretly meeting every week to unload their emotions by beating the crap out of each other. This would be strange indeed! But why is it that this would be considered so strange? I hold the view that it would be strange simply because this sort of behavior would deviate from that of today’s ordinary female behavior. As this thought is developed further, it becomes stranger still. How odd would it be for a support group exclusively for women to allow a single male figure to attend? Also, since when does an organized group of women go and perform random acts of planned and violent destruction? Questions such as these help me to realize how abnormal Fight Club would appear should the male and female parts be reversed.

All of these examples are situations of deviant female behavior taken to an extreme. Society equates normal female behavior to acting according to the feminine stereotype. Females should be emotional beings, slightly less stable than males, more dependent, and should abstain from wild and crazy acts, especially violence. This “normal female” should enjoy calm, peaceful activities, and when she does experience an emotional overload of some sort, whether it be anger, stress, or some other form, should unload it by shedding some tears, eating some chocolate, or receiving comfort another female. Seeing as the “women version” of Fight Club described above would drastically contradict this definition of female normalcy, it is easy to see why it would be met with such skepticism.