IF YOU GO down to the cinema today, you’re sure of a big surprise. Not teddy bears’ picnics but rows of delighted female fans watching The Lord of the Rings. Everyone is asking — well, lots of men, anyway — why so many women are raving about Peter Jackson’s trilogy.

You can understand their confusion. Thus far with The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers it’s been Nerd Nirvana all the way. All those lovingly recreated Middle Earths, Helm’s Deeps and Enchanted Forests. All those hobbits, wizards, elves and orcs. The fact that the best clinches you’re likely to see are when orcs grapple with elf warriors on quasi-medieval battlefields. None of this sounds particularly conducive to making the chardonnay pound fly out of the average woman’s handbag. I’m pretty sure that Jackson didn’t look through his lens at shots of Gandalf battling with Sauron, their beards fluttering in the wind, their nighties billowing around their knobbly knees, crabbing to each other about ultimate power, and think: “Chicks are going to go crazy for this”. Yet women everywhere, including myself, are going crazy for it. Either that or we’re simply going crazy.

So, what’s the appeal? Contrary to male opinion it isn’t all just a terrible misunderstanding. Women don’t see the words “Lord” and “Rings” in the title and think they’re going to see some Tolkien chick flick in which some lucky girl gets married to a hairy-footed hobbit. Because actually, guys, women have heard of the books, even though we probably didn’t bother reading them, having had much more time for Max Factor than Tolkien when we were teenagers. And yes, admittedly, to an extent we are just being nosy.

Movies such as The Lord of the Rings are a good way to spy on men, see within the most primitive areas of their psyches — all those yearnings for transcendence, nobility and majesty that still tickle away deep within the male soul. In this way, Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings is not so much a sex symbol as a human symbol, a male-decency symbol. And, as any woman could tell you, that’s always sexy.

Jackson is actually lucky we’re still in the market. Considering the level of swill aimed at them, it’s a wonder that women bother to go to the cinema at all. While the guys get Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects, all the women get is patronised. Sometimes you get a semi-decent chick flick, a Bridget Jones’s Diary or a Kissing Jessica Stein, but mainly it’s “Kissy-kissy, boo-hoo, hurrah, he loves me, the end”.

To illustrate: I caught a movie on satellite the other day — Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. Billed as a “gentle romantic comedy”, it claimed to be about a couple who decide to leave love to the fates. Naturally it was aimed exclusively at women. You could tell by the way Cusack and Beckinsale kept pulling gooey bashful faces that suggested they were five years old and needed to go pee-pee. And this is what film-makers think women want. No wonder we’re all hitching a ride to Middle Earth.

Above all, though, The Lord of the Rings is just Gladiator syndrome all over again. Gladiator was the last “male” movie to hit the female spot, proving that women were just as interested as men in complicated themes such as glory, honour, destiny and valour, and, you know, the “big stuff” of life.

Just as it didn’t bother women that Russell Crowe’s widowed Maximus didn’t manage to get himself a new girlfriend (here was a man too busy grappling with destiny to make puppy dog eyes at the ladies), Liv Tyler’s brief, soppy appearances as Aragorn’s elfin love interest are just plain irritating. (Leave the man alone, he’s got forces of darkness to deal with!) Just as men enjoyed Gladiator because it reminded them of what men could and should be, women loved it because it also reminded them of what men or, more to the point, mankind could be. The same applies to The Lord of the Rings. It is refreshing to see characters tussling with notions of integrity and destiny, instead of first dates and bra straps, even if they are only 4ft tall and need electrolysis on their toes.

Where men go wrong is that they think that just because they were more likely to read The Lord of the Rings as spotty adolescents, just because they’re genuine fans, they own the concept for life. And in some ways you can sympathise. Having done their time with Tolkien, and been mocked for their sins, they must resent female interlopers barging in when it’s all been laid out in nice easy form.

What was once a safe boys’ locker room has been forced open. It has been invaded by lots of annoying “instant experts” in skirts suddenly thinking they know what they’re talking about, when they haven’t paid their dues and can barely tell their Aragorns from their Legolases.

Still, all those miffed men out there had better get used to it. Females are on to this Lord of the Rings thing now. We want in, and there’s very little you guys can do about it. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.

What is the Lord of the Rings appeal? Send your e-mails now to debate@thetimes.co.uk

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