Mailer Again: Heterophobia in Tough Guys Don't Dance

In attaining a balance between the male and the female components of his psyche, Tim Madden, the hero of "average bravery" in Tough Guys Don't Dance, is an exemplum of Mailer's dyadic psychology, as put forward in The Prisoner of Sex. Madden is "average" in the sense that Wilhelm Reich, in Character Analysis, intended, when he refers to the ego's middle way between neurotic and the genital stages of development. Understanding Madden's gender confusion also requires recognizing the latent presence, in the novel, of Adorno. Mailer, too, believes that socio-cultural environments influence the formation of gender identity just as much as heredity. In many respects, Tough Guys is Mailer's way of exploring the potential of Adorno's controversial idea, that totalitarian spheres of influence and homosexuality have a causal relation. Suffice to say that Mailer's treatment of the links, as he sees them, between biological determinism and existential bravery, in Tough Guys, has not received the in-depth attention it deserves.