![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiI'm feeling inspired to do a bit of a response to James Reynolds's interesting article on the potential queering of Middle-earth in Amazon's Rings of Power series. In a nutshell, he sees a number of ways in which Tolkien's work can be read as queer coded and, thus, a lot of potential for overt queerness that feels in reasonably keeping with the source material. I agree with some parts of his case and not others. Overall, I think Reynolds's reflections speak to a broader issue many of us are considering today: how to best adapt classic works. Thought I'd weigh in.
Disclaimer: I'm writing this as an informal spew from memory, so I got no citations, and please let me know if I'm misremembering text. I've tried to get the diacritical marks right on names, but I have not bothered to check them. Apologies if they're off.
To begin with, how to adapt a text isn't an easy question. It brings up several potentially conflicting interests:
* The original author's intent/values.
* What the original text depicts/how to read the original text (a literary critical question).
* What long-time fans value about the text.
* What changes need to be made if changing media (film has different needs than books).
* What changes might draw in new fans, speak to current issues and sensibilities.
* What responsibilities the adaptation has to address social justice issues the original may not.
All these considerations have merit, even authorial intent. It's not absurd to ask ourselves what Tolkien might have wanted us to do with his work. If we love someone's work enough to care about this, it seems to me we do owe that creator some respect for their sensibilities. In Tolkien's case, he'd clearly want no queerness; he was a traditional, heteronormative Catholic. But that cannot be the only consideration. I firmly believe that—beyond a very delimited copyright to allow people to make a living from their work—stories belong to the world. They may originate with one person but cannot be owned by them forever (even if copyright law were to say otherwise).
So what is the original text doing? Authorial intent aside, what's already present in Middle-earth that indicates possibilities around sex and gender? Reynolds offers a number of readings of different aspects of Middle-earth, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't.
I agree with him that Middle-earth is not sexless. It has a lot of sex; it's just off-stage and almost always in (heterosexual) marriage. Indeed, marriage, sex, and children are the norm, and being single for life, while acceptable, is rather unusual across all the Free Peoples.
I also agree that it's reasonable to suppose queerness would exist in Middle-earth, whether Tolkien actually showed it or not, if for no other reason than that Middle-earth has humans in it, and humans have always included queer people. Tolkien gives no indication that humans (Men) are categorically different from humans as we know them; thus, I assume queer people would be there, though possibly somewhat socially invisible. Indeed, one could argue that Eowyn is gender queer, and her people work pretty hard to render her desire to join the men in fighting invisible.
Reynolds also discusses another interesting vein to mine (so to speak): the question of Dwarvish women. No other Free People obscures the presence of women in the same way. If they do often travel in the guise of men, that does, indeed, open up interesting possibilities for queer readings within the frame of material the books provide.
Some of Reynold's readings, however, seem less supported to me.
On Queering Elves
Reynolds notes that Elves are culturally and experientially different from Men. True enough. From this, he extrapolates, "Perhaps, within elvish culture they don’t recognise sexual preference as an identity; they perhaps don’t have words akin to ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’, or ‘homophobia’. While there are examples of heterosexual elven marriages, in the unnarrated background of Rivendell or Lothlorien, there could be same-sex elvish couples, their coupling distinct from the sexuality norms of men."
There's not a blessed doubt in my mind Elves have no words akin to "gay" or "lesbian" or "homophobia." These are 20th century concepts—or if taken back to their antecedents, like "homosexual," late-19th century. They're very modern, very culturally specific ways to talk about sexuality. And I bring that up as more than a nitpick. It's a point about culture.
When fans complain about adaptations not being "pure" enough—and they do this far too much—one reply is that fantasy and sci-fi are made up, so there is no "truth" to violate. Essentially, anything goes. (Reynolds does not argue this, by the way.) Any fan of genre fiction, however, knows in their heart that not anything goes. We care about these stories because they feel real, and a prime reason they feel real is because they have good worldbuilding. They are internally coherent. Tolkien spent decades making Middle-earth an internally coherent cultural space. I don't think he did it with perfect plausibility, but he did it extremely well. And both respect for the author and a commonsense desire to create good storytelling by using what is already good suggest we should pay attention to the cultures he created. I think Reynolds agrees; hence, his readings of details from the books. But I draw some different conclusions.
I'd flip Reynolds's script. He says, in essence, that maybe humans have hang-ups about queerness, but that doesn't mean Elves do. I'd vote for the reverse: it makes sense that humans have queerness (we always do, with or without hang-ups), but I'm not sure that means Elves do. In fact, my own fanon is that Middle-earth is so heteronormative, in part, because of the vast Elvish influence on Men.
In the books, Elves are very heteronormative. They're so heteronormative their theology considers binary gender an innate characteristic of the soul. There are inherently male souls and female souls, and as far as we see, these are always assigned to corresponding male and female bodies: ex. Elbereth is a female spirit, Manwe a male spirit. There is no intimation of sex outside of marriage and all the marriages we see are heterosexual.
It's also relevant, I think, that Elves don't seem to have a very strong sex drive. I infer this because they seem to have no problem waiting thousands of years to marry (and never seem to have kids outside of marriage). Tolkien tells us that married couples, after raising kids, often live for long stretches of time apart, which implies they don't need regular sex to feel close or reasonably contented. Elrond, no doubt, misses his wife, but he seems to manage pretty well as a presumably celibate person for over two thousand years or something without her. Elves also generally don't have many kids across thousands of years. Fëanor had seven, but he's an outlier. Galadriel had one or two (depending on the book you're in); Elrond had three. All this says to me that they have a low sex drive, which means they probably don't have a lot of motivation to have romances outside of their heteronormative marriages. In addition, marriage lasts forever, including after death, unless it is broken in very rare and aberrant circumstances, like Finwë and Miriel. So it seems unlikely there are many dalliances beyond official marriages.
Now, one could posit, as Reynolds does, that a lot goes on we don't see in the books. Sure. Fanfic does that all the time. But it's going to be on the basis of essentially no textual evidence and somewhat at odds with the rather rigid views of sex-and-gender we see culturally presented throughout much of Tolkien's material. In effect, designing Elves to unproblematically embrace queerness requires significantly rewriting the existing worldbuilding. I'd vote against that—certainly if there are other ways to queer Middle-earth that are more in keeping with its existing worldbuilding.
Here are some ways: explore that Men (and I'd loosely include Hobbits here, as basically human) have more sex/gender fluidity than Elves. Explore the Dwarvish angle, as Reynolds suggests. Explore queerness in Elvish society in keeping with the existing worldbuilding, which is to say they'd probably find it weird and baffling. I know that angle wouldn't provide happy, unproblematic queer representation, but it could be compelling and interesting.
Yes, stories evolve. Tolkien didn't intend Middle-earth to be queer; that doesn't mean it can't be. Times changes, audiences change, audiences' needs and comfort zones change. There's also a lot of tacit (I'm sure unintentional) racism in Tolkien; that's definitely worth reworking. And by all means, let's get rid of Cockney Orcs. But I'd vote for jettisoning careful worldbuilding with caution, partly, as I've said, because good worldbuilding backs good storytelling—and Tolkien was supremely good at it. Let's not brush that off.
But moreover—and this may be even more important—our society right now, in my view, has a terrible difficulty embracing cultural diversity. This has long been true on the Right, the traditional side of "my country, right or wrong" and "USA is number 1" and "Jesus is the only path to salvation." It's a newer phenomenon on the (American) Left, but it concerns me deeply because it is opposed to the traditional leftwing values of inclusiveness, plurality, and diversity. The Left (as a generalization of a Zeitgeist) seems not to be aware of its growing ethnocentrism, and that lack of awareness allows this parochialism to fester. Thus, the Left begins to play a rightwing game: to classify as wrong any system of belief or cultural construct that doesn't fit the one way defined as correct.
Middle-earth is a very well-imagined secondary world. And it is an inherently conservative one without being restrictive and punitive in the way (I find) Narnia can read. I think that's actually a very useful thing for the Left to explore, because, I fear, we (as a generalization) have forgotten that conservatives can actually be good people, that conservative views of the world actually do have some advantages, as well as disadvantages, that exploring other cultures is cognitively and emotionally valuable work. Elves are pretty heteronormative—but not like American Evangelical Christians are. So what does that mean? How can we engage with queerness without sidestepping those cultural questions? Personally, I would rather explore that than wish it away into queer utopia that doesn't fit the bones of Middle-earth very well.
I have nothing against queer utopias, by the way. A number of the sci-fi cultures I write have no prejudice based on sexual preference, or that's my intent. (I write gender diversity less well, but I'm working on it.) I just don't think Middle-earth is one of them.
On Textual Evidence for Queerness in LotR
Reynolds also argues that The Lord of the Rings is already easy to read as queer because of the queer coding in some situations, particularly the relationship between Frodo and Sam. He's correct that Frodo and Sam are easy for many readers to see as gay; jokes have been swirling about it since at least the 1970s. But he's incorrect—yeah, I'm going to say flat out incorrect—that the textual moments he cites inherently imply gay love. I'm going to unpack this in detail because it means a lot to me for reasons I will explain in due course.
Reynolds writes,
Plenty has been written on the queerness of Sam and Frodo’s relationship. Their devotion, and their intimacy, are all touching inferences of queerness.
On more than one occasion, the hobbits kiss each other – ‘"Sam took his master’s hands…and kissed them" ("Mount Doom," Return of The King). At other times, embarking as a duo, they fall asleep together – "In [Sam’s] lap lay Frodo’s head…" (‘The Stairs of Cirith Ungol, The Two Towers).
What might further this reading is Sam and Frodo’s ending, parallel to another "queered" couple. Sam eventually joins Frodo in the Undying Lands. Joining a male companion, effectively, in death, parallels mythic warrior Achilles and his companion/ lover Patroclus, made famous by Madeline Miller’s novel Song of Achilles. After Patroclus’ death, Achilles insists that he is buried with him.
The interred mingling of bodies, the love and devotion implied in Miller’s novel, could be mapped onto Sam and Frodo’s relationship.
A quick grammatical note: "inference" can't happen without someone to do the inferring, and Reynolds doesn't say who's inferring this. If his point is that some have inferred queerness, yes. Many have, as he notes. But if his point is that this is a well-grounded reading, and I think that is his point, I disagree.
Point 1: Devotion and intimacy between members of the same sex imply queerness. They don't. I'll come back to this later because it's important.
Point 2: Frodo and Sam kiss each other and fall asleep in each other's arms. (They also bathe naked together and frolic naked on the hills by the Barrow Downs, with Merry and Pippin.) These are signs of queerness, he argues. No, they are not. This is an example of the ethnocentrism I said concerned me above. Many cultures have traditions of kissing that do not imply sexuality, ex. kissing family members, kissing people hello and goodbye, etc. To read these kisses as sexual is to dismiss the existence of different cultural codes around kissing. They sleep in each other's arms because it's freaking cold out on Gorgoroth. Is it sweet and intimate? Absolutely. Is it sexual? Not one shred of evidence. Reynolds doesn't mention it, but I'll also add they bathe/frolic naked because they don't have the same hang-ups we have about (same sex) nakedness; this, again, is common in many other cultures, ex. Japan.
Point 3: They end together in the Undying Lands, like Achilles and Patroclus, and this implies a pairing as significant as Sam and Rose's. Yeah, it does. That doesn't imply that it's sexual.
Why am I so adamant about this?
Because I am so, so very tired of being erased as a friendship bonder (someone whose most intimate relationships are based on friendship not sexual attraction). The very old, very Freudian idea that any intimacy, intensity, or even physicality in a relationship must be sexual is poison. I cannot overstate that damage that this does to real people's lives. Let me be clear: this is not about saying gay love isn't valid. It's about saying that non-sexual love is valid.
Every time we repeat this falsehood that love and intimacy must imply sexual attraction, we erase asexuals and friendship bonders (these are different things, by the way). We erase platonic friendship. Every straight woman who prioritizes an abusive man over her healthy friendship with a woman because it's the man she loves is being wounded by this narrative. And of course, the same principle applies for any genders and relationships that devalue platonic love compared to sexual love, even when the sexual love is not loving.
Here's the thing:
Frodo and Sam do love each other and kiss each other and sleep in each other's arms. They are at least as close to each other as to anyone else in their lives, and arguably closer. And they do end up together at the end of their lives, and Sam does liken his relationship with Frodo to his relationship with Rose when he says he feels torn in two between them. And none of that implies any sexual attraction. Sexual attraction has no necessary connection to that. Can it exist alongside all those things? Of course. Must it? No. Is it weird, freaky, and unlikely to have that kind of devotion without sexual attraction? No, it's really not.
And for those who think there's not enough gay representation (and they're right), just try looking for purely platonic, non-familial representation of profound love. And once you've found it, go look at the fanfic: 95% of it will read the relationship as sexual. That's no shade on the fanfic. Fic's gonna fic; it's where people go for fun. Me too. But if we're talking about serious, official adaption that will reach millions and cost millions and, via copyright law and sheer expense, prohibit most others from sharing their own takes in kind, we really need to be careful about not erasing non-sexual love. We're better about this than were ten years ago, but we still have a very long way to go. It hurts so many people in so many ways, this devaluation of any relationship between two people who don't want to have sex. Please, let's stop doing it.
In Summary
I am for judiciously queering Middle-earth. I'd do it sparingly, partly out of respect for the Professor, who wouldn't like it; partly out of respect for the more conservative fans, who will be genuinely emotionally hurt by it. Their feelings aren't more important than the feelings of those who will be helped, and that's why I say let's do it—but sparingly. Let's try to find the balance between the help and hurt. Tolkien, an indelibly religious man, was gentle to areligious readers by not harping on words like God or on religious ceremony; he garnered so many areligious fans from that gentleness. Reading queerness into his work can be gentle to conservatives in return. That's much in the spirit of the original works. Let's do it, but do it sparingly.
Reynolds suggests that the non-human societies in Middle-earth will be easier to queer because they don't have human baggage. This is possibly true for Dwarves; they're a bit of blank slate with the near total narrative absence of Dwarvish women. But Men are queer already; there's no shortage of territory to explore there. I'd focus there (or with Hobbits) rather than Elves, who, I think, do not support queering well, given their very heteronormative culture and general deemphasis on sexuality.
Lastly, while queering Middle-earth, let's not forget that it is okay for people to be truly devoted to each other without wanting to have sex. Gil-galad and Elendil became fast friends; that doesn't have to mean they were sexually in love. It's okay; they don't have to be.
Disclaimer: I'm writing this as an informal spew from memory, so I got no citations, and please let me know if I'm misremembering text. I've tried to get the diacritical marks right on names, but I have not bothered to check them. Apologies if they're off.
To begin with, how to adapt a text isn't an easy question. It brings up several potentially conflicting interests:
* The original author's intent/values.
* What the original text depicts/how to read the original text (a literary critical question).
* What long-time fans value about the text.
* What changes need to be made if changing media (film has different needs than books).
* What changes might draw in new fans, speak to current issues and sensibilities.
* What responsibilities the adaptation has to address social justice issues the original may not.
All these considerations have merit, even authorial intent. It's not absurd to ask ourselves what Tolkien might have wanted us to do with his work. If we love someone's work enough to care about this, it seems to me we do owe that creator some respect for their sensibilities. In Tolkien's case, he'd clearly want no queerness; he was a traditional, heteronormative Catholic. But that cannot be the only consideration. I firmly believe that—beyond a very delimited copyright to allow people to make a living from their work—stories belong to the world. They may originate with one person but cannot be owned by them forever (even if copyright law were to say otherwise).
So what is the original text doing? Authorial intent aside, what's already present in Middle-earth that indicates possibilities around sex and gender? Reynolds offers a number of readings of different aspects of Middle-earth, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't.
I agree with him that Middle-earth is not sexless. It has a lot of sex; it's just off-stage and almost always in (heterosexual) marriage. Indeed, marriage, sex, and children are the norm, and being single for life, while acceptable, is rather unusual across all the Free Peoples.
I also agree that it's reasonable to suppose queerness would exist in Middle-earth, whether Tolkien actually showed it or not, if for no other reason than that Middle-earth has humans in it, and humans have always included queer people. Tolkien gives no indication that humans (Men) are categorically different from humans as we know them; thus, I assume queer people would be there, though possibly somewhat socially invisible. Indeed, one could argue that Eowyn is gender queer, and her people work pretty hard to render her desire to join the men in fighting invisible.
Reynolds also discusses another interesting vein to mine (so to speak): the question of Dwarvish women. No other Free People obscures the presence of women in the same way. If they do often travel in the guise of men, that does, indeed, open up interesting possibilities for queer readings within the frame of material the books provide.
Some of Reynold's readings, however, seem less supported to me.
On Queering Elves
Reynolds notes that Elves are culturally and experientially different from Men. True enough. From this, he extrapolates, "Perhaps, within elvish culture they don’t recognise sexual preference as an identity; they perhaps don’t have words akin to ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’, or ‘homophobia’. While there are examples of heterosexual elven marriages, in the unnarrated background of Rivendell or Lothlorien, there could be same-sex elvish couples, their coupling distinct from the sexuality norms of men."
There's not a blessed doubt in my mind Elves have no words akin to "gay" or "lesbian" or "homophobia." These are 20th century concepts—or if taken back to their antecedents, like "homosexual," late-19th century. They're very modern, very culturally specific ways to talk about sexuality. And I bring that up as more than a nitpick. It's a point about culture.
When fans complain about adaptations not being "pure" enough—and they do this far too much—one reply is that fantasy and sci-fi are made up, so there is no "truth" to violate. Essentially, anything goes. (Reynolds does not argue this, by the way.) Any fan of genre fiction, however, knows in their heart that not anything goes. We care about these stories because they feel real, and a prime reason they feel real is because they have good worldbuilding. They are internally coherent. Tolkien spent decades making Middle-earth an internally coherent cultural space. I don't think he did it with perfect plausibility, but he did it extremely well. And both respect for the author and a commonsense desire to create good storytelling by using what is already good suggest we should pay attention to the cultures he created. I think Reynolds agrees; hence, his readings of details from the books. But I draw some different conclusions.
I'd flip Reynolds's script. He says, in essence, that maybe humans have hang-ups about queerness, but that doesn't mean Elves do. I'd vote for the reverse: it makes sense that humans have queerness (we always do, with or without hang-ups), but I'm not sure that means Elves do. In fact, my own fanon is that Middle-earth is so heteronormative, in part, because of the vast Elvish influence on Men.
In the books, Elves are very heteronormative. They're so heteronormative their theology considers binary gender an innate characteristic of the soul. There are inherently male souls and female souls, and as far as we see, these are always assigned to corresponding male and female bodies: ex. Elbereth is a female spirit, Manwe a male spirit. There is no intimation of sex outside of marriage and all the marriages we see are heterosexual.
It's also relevant, I think, that Elves don't seem to have a very strong sex drive. I infer this because they seem to have no problem waiting thousands of years to marry (and never seem to have kids outside of marriage). Tolkien tells us that married couples, after raising kids, often live for long stretches of time apart, which implies they don't need regular sex to feel close or reasonably contented. Elrond, no doubt, misses his wife, but he seems to manage pretty well as a presumably celibate person for over two thousand years or something without her. Elves also generally don't have many kids across thousands of years. Fëanor had seven, but he's an outlier. Galadriel had one or two (depending on the book you're in); Elrond had three. All this says to me that they have a low sex drive, which means they probably don't have a lot of motivation to have romances outside of their heteronormative marriages. In addition, marriage lasts forever, including after death, unless it is broken in very rare and aberrant circumstances, like Finwë and Miriel. So it seems unlikely there are many dalliances beyond official marriages.
Now, one could posit, as Reynolds does, that a lot goes on we don't see in the books. Sure. Fanfic does that all the time. But it's going to be on the basis of essentially no textual evidence and somewhat at odds with the rather rigid views of sex-and-gender we see culturally presented throughout much of Tolkien's material. In effect, designing Elves to unproblematically embrace queerness requires significantly rewriting the existing worldbuilding. I'd vote against that—certainly if there are other ways to queer Middle-earth that are more in keeping with its existing worldbuilding.
Here are some ways: explore that Men (and I'd loosely include Hobbits here, as basically human) have more sex/gender fluidity than Elves. Explore the Dwarvish angle, as Reynolds suggests. Explore queerness in Elvish society in keeping with the existing worldbuilding, which is to say they'd probably find it weird and baffling. I know that angle wouldn't provide happy, unproblematic queer representation, but it could be compelling and interesting.
Yes, stories evolve. Tolkien didn't intend Middle-earth to be queer; that doesn't mean it can't be. Times changes, audiences change, audiences' needs and comfort zones change. There's also a lot of tacit (I'm sure unintentional) racism in Tolkien; that's definitely worth reworking. And by all means, let's get rid of Cockney Orcs. But I'd vote for jettisoning careful worldbuilding with caution, partly, as I've said, because good worldbuilding backs good storytelling—and Tolkien was supremely good at it. Let's not brush that off.
But moreover—and this may be even more important—our society right now, in my view, has a terrible difficulty embracing cultural diversity. This has long been true on the Right, the traditional side of "my country, right or wrong" and "USA is number 1" and "Jesus is the only path to salvation." It's a newer phenomenon on the (American) Left, but it concerns me deeply because it is opposed to the traditional leftwing values of inclusiveness, plurality, and diversity. The Left (as a generalization of a Zeitgeist) seems not to be aware of its growing ethnocentrism, and that lack of awareness allows this parochialism to fester. Thus, the Left begins to play a rightwing game: to classify as wrong any system of belief or cultural construct that doesn't fit the one way defined as correct.
Middle-earth is a very well-imagined secondary world. And it is an inherently conservative one without being restrictive and punitive in the way (I find) Narnia can read. I think that's actually a very useful thing for the Left to explore, because, I fear, we (as a generalization) have forgotten that conservatives can actually be good people, that conservative views of the world actually do have some advantages, as well as disadvantages, that exploring other cultures is cognitively and emotionally valuable work. Elves are pretty heteronormative—but not like American Evangelical Christians are. So what does that mean? How can we engage with queerness without sidestepping those cultural questions? Personally, I would rather explore that than wish it away into queer utopia that doesn't fit the bones of Middle-earth very well.
I have nothing against queer utopias, by the way. A number of the sci-fi cultures I write have no prejudice based on sexual preference, or that's my intent. (I write gender diversity less well, but I'm working on it.) I just don't think Middle-earth is one of them.
On Textual Evidence for Queerness in LotR
Reynolds also argues that The Lord of the Rings is already easy to read as queer because of the queer coding in some situations, particularly the relationship between Frodo and Sam. He's correct that Frodo and Sam are easy for many readers to see as gay; jokes have been swirling about it since at least the 1970s. But he's incorrect—yeah, I'm going to say flat out incorrect—that the textual moments he cites inherently imply gay love. I'm going to unpack this in detail because it means a lot to me for reasons I will explain in due course.
Reynolds writes,
Plenty has been written on the queerness of Sam and Frodo’s relationship. Their devotion, and their intimacy, are all touching inferences of queerness.
On more than one occasion, the hobbits kiss each other – ‘"Sam took his master’s hands…and kissed them" ("Mount Doom," Return of The King). At other times, embarking as a duo, they fall asleep together – "In [Sam’s] lap lay Frodo’s head…" (‘The Stairs of Cirith Ungol, The Two Towers).
What might further this reading is Sam and Frodo’s ending, parallel to another "queered" couple. Sam eventually joins Frodo in the Undying Lands. Joining a male companion, effectively, in death, parallels mythic warrior Achilles and his companion/ lover Patroclus, made famous by Madeline Miller’s novel Song of Achilles. After Patroclus’ death, Achilles insists that he is buried with him.
The interred mingling of bodies, the love and devotion implied in Miller’s novel, could be mapped onto Sam and Frodo’s relationship.
A quick grammatical note: "inference" can't happen without someone to do the inferring, and Reynolds doesn't say who's inferring this. If his point is that some have inferred queerness, yes. Many have, as he notes. But if his point is that this is a well-grounded reading, and I think that is his point, I disagree.
Point 1: Devotion and intimacy between members of the same sex imply queerness. They don't. I'll come back to this later because it's important.
Point 2: Frodo and Sam kiss each other and fall asleep in each other's arms. (They also bathe naked together and frolic naked on the hills by the Barrow Downs, with Merry and Pippin.) These are signs of queerness, he argues. No, they are not. This is an example of the ethnocentrism I said concerned me above. Many cultures have traditions of kissing that do not imply sexuality, ex. kissing family members, kissing people hello and goodbye, etc. To read these kisses as sexual is to dismiss the existence of different cultural codes around kissing. They sleep in each other's arms because it's freaking cold out on Gorgoroth. Is it sweet and intimate? Absolutely. Is it sexual? Not one shred of evidence. Reynolds doesn't mention it, but I'll also add they bathe/frolic naked because they don't have the same hang-ups we have about (same sex) nakedness; this, again, is common in many other cultures, ex. Japan.
Point 3: They end together in the Undying Lands, like Achilles and Patroclus, and this implies a pairing as significant as Sam and Rose's. Yeah, it does. That doesn't imply that it's sexual.
Why am I so adamant about this?
Because I am so, so very tired of being erased as a friendship bonder (someone whose most intimate relationships are based on friendship not sexual attraction). The very old, very Freudian idea that any intimacy, intensity, or even physicality in a relationship must be sexual is poison. I cannot overstate that damage that this does to real people's lives. Let me be clear: this is not about saying gay love isn't valid. It's about saying that non-sexual love is valid.
Every time we repeat this falsehood that love and intimacy must imply sexual attraction, we erase asexuals and friendship bonders (these are different things, by the way). We erase platonic friendship. Every straight woman who prioritizes an abusive man over her healthy friendship with a woman because it's the man she loves is being wounded by this narrative. And of course, the same principle applies for any genders and relationships that devalue platonic love compared to sexual love, even when the sexual love is not loving.
Here's the thing:
Frodo and Sam do love each other and kiss each other and sleep in each other's arms. They are at least as close to each other as to anyone else in their lives, and arguably closer. And they do end up together at the end of their lives, and Sam does liken his relationship with Frodo to his relationship with Rose when he says he feels torn in two between them. And none of that implies any sexual attraction. Sexual attraction has no necessary connection to that. Can it exist alongside all those things? Of course. Must it? No. Is it weird, freaky, and unlikely to have that kind of devotion without sexual attraction? No, it's really not.
And for those who think there's not enough gay representation (and they're right), just try looking for purely platonic, non-familial representation of profound love. And once you've found it, go look at the fanfic: 95% of it will read the relationship as sexual. That's no shade on the fanfic. Fic's gonna fic; it's where people go for fun. Me too. But if we're talking about serious, official adaption that will reach millions and cost millions and, via copyright law and sheer expense, prohibit most others from sharing their own takes in kind, we really need to be careful about not erasing non-sexual love. We're better about this than were ten years ago, but we still have a very long way to go. It hurts so many people in so many ways, this devaluation of any relationship between two people who don't want to have sex. Please, let's stop doing it.
In Summary
I am for judiciously queering Middle-earth. I'd do it sparingly, partly out of respect for the Professor, who wouldn't like it; partly out of respect for the more conservative fans, who will be genuinely emotionally hurt by it. Their feelings aren't more important than the feelings of those who will be helped, and that's why I say let's do it—but sparingly. Let's try to find the balance between the help and hurt. Tolkien, an indelibly religious man, was gentle to areligious readers by not harping on words like God or on religious ceremony; he garnered so many areligious fans from that gentleness. Reading queerness into his work can be gentle to conservatives in return. That's much in the spirit of the original works. Let's do it, but do it sparingly.
Reynolds suggests that the non-human societies in Middle-earth will be easier to queer because they don't have human baggage. This is possibly true for Dwarves; they're a bit of blank slate with the near total narrative absence of Dwarvish women. But Men are queer already; there's no shortage of territory to explore there. I'd focus there (or with Hobbits) rather than Elves, who, I think, do not support queering well, given their very heteronormative culture and general deemphasis on sexuality.
Lastly, while queering Middle-earth, let's not forget that it is okay for people to be truly devoted to each other without wanting to have sex. Gil-galad and Elendil became fast friends; that doesn't have to mean they were sexually in love. It's okay; they don't have to be.
