Fordim, I’m going to disagree with the general consensus here, I hope I don't sound too stroppy but you did ask....
I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to your class by being shocked and horrified at their attitude. Would you experience equal shock and horror if a class of teenage/young adult males made a fuss if they had to read a girls’ school story with absolutely no male figures in it whatsoever? Perhaps you could meet your female students at least part way by acknowledging they do have a point. As tar-ancalime says, women are generally expected to appreciate "boys own" literature while men do not reciprocate the favour. I hope you are equally shocked and horrified by the fact that Harry Potter's author was forced to be known as JK rather than Joanne Rowling, because boys won't even read books
by females, let alone about them.
Tar-ancalime says
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a lot of stories that Just Aren't About Men, but I've found that men are much better able simply to avoid these (sometimes by relegating them to some kind of secondary-genre status...
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: but actually, unlike boys’ books, which tend ignore the female sex completely, girlie genres and books nearly always include males.
I chose the example of the girls school story genre earlier because it was the only kind I could think of which would not contain any men. Jane Eyre, Little Women, all the works mentioned here as “girlie books,” are full of strong and interesting male characters - Laurie, Rochester....
But as for the Hobbit, your question certainly got me wondering. Yes, I read it and loved it as a child, and the "masculine" aspect of it did not even occur to me. Treasure Island on the other hand did not float my boat, although I did like Kidnapped....subject matter was a bit more romantic perhaps.
So why did I like the Hobbit? Firstly, I think, because I was only seven at the time I first read it, so probably too young to notice, and like Feanor, I had only brothers, no sisters. The fact that all characters were male would not in itself have been sufficiently exotic to grab my interest - with four brothers I was well acquainted with the masculine world. But I did not think of the characters as male, I thought of them in terms of their species: dwarves, hobbits, trolls and dragons. It was this that gave them the appeal of being exotic and exciting, of being “other”, not their maleness, which actually is irrelevant.
Do any of your female students like Watership Down? That might be a possible route of persuasion.... Now if The Hobbit is sexist (AND I AM NOT SAYING IT IS) Watership Down is super, super sexist. The doe rabbits, when they make their rare appearances, are just half-witted breeding machines. But when I read it, (at around 11, an age when I was more aware of such things than I was at seven) I honestly didn't notice - because they were rabbits, not people. Not that I would compare the two books in terms of the affection I hold for them, I consider the Hobbit a far superior work.
I would also add, that I totally agree with Alphaelin, that the current “Babysitters Club” type reading matter favoured by young girls is deeply depressing.