What Happens if Therese is a Man?

As I read The Price of Salt, I tried to pay special attention to the factors that might have gotten the book censored, and I came up with a question. Is the lesbianism the core issue? If Therese was a man and the plot and tone of the book stayed the same, what would we get. Well, the short answer is something a lot closer to Lolita, which was apparently inspired by The Price of Salt.

I'm really taken with this question though. If Therese is an out of work man who begins to fall in love (dangerously and possibly dysfunctionally), does the book still assault community decency? Without the queerness, there's still a lot of subversive ideas in it about class. Adultery is a main plot point. I'm not saying that Highsmith should have changed her main character's gender, because in many ways the book's about female experience. I'm just wondering what happens when you move the target for censorship away from the homosexuality. Are any of the other ideas in the book so terrifying?