They are "a generation of men raised by women," being without a male example in their lives to help shape their masculinity. The fight club is not really about physical combat, money, skill or winning but instead a way for participants to experience feeling in a society where they are otherwise numb. The fighting forms a resistance to the impulse to be "cocooned" in society. The fighting between the men stripped away the "fear of pain" and "the reliance on material signifiers of their self-worth", leaving them to experience something valuable.