Manly heroes ‘will be written out of history’

BOOKS about “manly” heroes are on “borrowed time”, a leading expert on Sir Ernest Shackleton has said, as society increasingly dismisses male virtues as “toxic masculinity”.

Joanna Grochowicz, a polar historian, has claimed that the traditionally “masculine” attributes of the men she has written about are falling out of fashion amid a drift towards a “gender neutral society”. The author said that histories of “white blokes” – like the great Antarctic pioneers Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Shackleton – are now on “borrowed time”, with the “manliness” of male historical figures dismissed as a negative trait.

Speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival, she added: “I’m really worried that we’re moving into a gender-neutral society where gender-specific attributes are not revered.

“Rather than trashing all of these qualities I think we need to broaden them and start discussing them.”

Ms Grochowicz has cited figures including Australian polar explorer Sir Douglas Mawson – who was the sole survivor of a fatal mission to the Antarctic – as displaying traditionally “manly” virtues of physical courage and stoicism, which she said were no longer celebrated as they once were.

She said: “This idea we need to shut down the discussion because of toxic masculinity – or we can’t talk about this, or these sex specific qualities – because we are entering a gender-neutral, new way of living: I think that is crazy.”

Ms Grochowicz, a New Zealander, has said she is lucky that her chosen subject – explorers of the heroic age of South Pole exploration – did not displace any indigenous populations, as her subject would be even more unfashionable in modern historical circles.

As it is, the author has said that she feels that she can either “defend” her subject, or be forced to move on to more modish areas of study, saying she may have to “start writing about women in some historic period”.