Not a huge fan of her tone at times (at other points I do find the blunt comments justified, though), and the Twitter convos she links to are hardly something to be proud of. Writing that "The neckbeards of today likewise think of themselves as progressive, liberal, and open to gay marriage – but spend your time in the company of any neckbeard and you quickly realize they are some of the most regressive people you’ll find outside of an Aryan Nation meeting" is fairly nonsensical.

That there are racist and sexist messages in Tolkien is difficult to deny; and the former aspect at least is almost inevitably copied into any Tolkienesque "high fantasy" (the sexism often as well). Still, it's important to note a passage like the one with Sam and the Easterling, or the ones where Galadriel's importance is underlined, in order to make clear that the racism and sexism are side-effects of Tolkien's nostalgia (as so often with nostalgia, one could say nostalgic to a past that never existed), rather than intentional propagations of his beliefs. Judging by the above-quoted comment, the blog author doesn't think the distinction is one worth making, but I certainly do. If you make a three-line summary of LotR, odds are it will sound like neo-Nazi propaganda; it's certainly important to point out that it's really not.

Her point about how the human-Elven couples in Tolkien all have Elven women and human men was new to me, though... I'd never really considered that before, that there are no men giving up their immortality for a mortal woman, or even just marrying one for the duration of her life. That said, Lúthien is the only one who does give up her immortality, and I do think she (like Galadriel) should count as a valid strong female character. Eowyn is admittedly a different story, and Arwen gets too little "screentime" to make any meaningful analysis.