Is ‘The Lord of the Rings’ a queer love story?

In Tolkien’s fantasy world, gender is “other”

It was strange — an all-male epic whose heroes were the feminine ones? Not everybody was into “The Lord of the Rings.” Reviews were full of tart remarks.

In 1955, one notes that J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters seem not to know “anything about women, except by hearsay.” But, year by year, the world fell in love with the biggest, queerest, most closeted…