Great thread. You know, I think it's perfectly healthy to be uncomfortable with certain aspects of Tolkien's work, just as it is healthy to be uncomfortable with certain aspects of Pullman's work (An entire village of horrible, drunk, smelly Slavs!
So much more progressive that J.R.R.T., Mr. Pullman!).
What I don't understand is the utter dismissal of a genuine work of art and a reductive reading that merely dismembers the material.
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The University where I graduated from... has now been so thoroughly saturated with the post-modern worldview that a post-graduate English lit. syllabus has more to do with marxism, absurdism, feminism, class and racism, lesbianism, and a horde of other isms which, in and of themselves, are fine discussion points and pertinent to current world affairs, but are more applicable to sociology, psychology or poli-sci.
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I don't agree with you on Star Wars, but I think you're pretty spot-on here. I'm a feminist, but this was one of the several reasons as to why I decided against getting a PhD. And don't get me started on how those who are genuinely interested in Tolkien are often treated in academia...