Not until Tyler becomes a threat to Marla, who has been Tyler's lover, does Jack take steps to protect her. The film, though violent and brutally blunt, is remarkably nonsexual. There is not a single gay character. In fact, just before the credits roll at the end of Fight Club , one can observe one such nearly subliminal image. There are also nagging fears of castration and mutilation that pervade the film.
Castration is also a threat used against adversaries at other points of the film.
Afterward, Jack seems powerful and in control. This ties into the American dream and the mythology that anyone can become rich or become president. Part of the way that the working poor are lulled into cooperating and staying in the service of richer classes is by this unspoken promise that if they work hard they will ascend to higher security and status. Implying that the fights fill the men's need to test themselves, Tyler also says that this generation of men has had no Great Depression or great wars in which they could prove their toughness and worth. In spite of the implied criticism of social stratification, the narrator behind the narrator or the core sensibility of the film does particularly lionize gray-collar men.