We're Giving up Toxic Masculinity for Lent

Emma's Introduction and X-communication

Originally posted on substack by Emma Cieslik Mar 12, 2025

On the afternoon of December 7th, U.S. Catholic magazine posted an article that I wrote last June on X. The article—a reflection on how gender diversity has always been part of the Catholic Church in light of the release of Dignitas Infinita—exploded online, receiving over 1 million views. Elon Musk even responded to a tweet calling the article “heresy.” At about 10 pm a day after the magazine posted, Musk shared a five-word response: “the world is going mad.”

Editor’s Note: This is the the Introductory post to a new series on Catholic masculinity. The first installment in the series is “No Country for Kings: Bishop Barron & the Catholic Performance of Masculinity.” Subsequent installments of this series will be forthcoming in the next weeks.

Musk and other X users’ responses revealed a great deal about present American Catholic beliefs surrounding gender and masculinity—at the heart of this series. They were largely upset that I argued trans and nonbinary people have existed throughout the history of the Church, and that some of them were key church leaders, mystics, and saints.

TerfSchool—the account holder’s name referencing trans-exclusionary radical feminists--reinforced that “there is male and female.” Mark in California arguing that “there is no such thing as transgender or nonbinary,” and Erin for Parental Rights said “this is so disgusting and blasphemous.” Their comments largely aligned with one of Trump’s first Executive Orders, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremistm and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” in which the president argued “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” Two months before Trump signed this Executive Order, X users were saying the same thing in their reactions to the article.

But while some of their comments attacked my argument, others focused instead on me. Users attempted to dox me by sharing screenshots of my profile and other writings, with Julie Gunlock criticizing the mask I wear in my profile picture. Some commenters misgendered me. Others launched homophobic slurs against me and against U.S. Catholic; others called me mentally ill and used ableist slurs against me. Race even came into play, with another Twitter user questioning if I am Black. At the heart of their reaction was an attempt to discredit my argument by attempting to discredit my sanity, my gender, and my spirituality.

Several Twitter users called for my excommunication—not just in name but the “bell, book, candle” ritual of a major excommunication. SuperiorSexyIndianMan (unfortunately this is his actual X username) posted “Satan approves of your heresy” with a gif of Satan wiggling his tongue, and still others conflated this “heresy” with either communism or the spread of neoliberalism; two of the commenters spiraled into a disagreement as another called me a Marxist.

While this may seem an unlikely place to start Max’s and my deep dive into masculinity in the United States, we feel the situation perfectly encapsulates what we hope to discuss. Musk’s response captures the fear among X users, a fear not only about the implications of my argument—that trans, nonbinary, and intersex people have always existed—and me using my voice—specifically a queer, femme one—to express it. It’s the fear that my argument and me making it in some way invalidates how many of the commenters perceive and practice masculinity, or gender writ large, today.

In many ways, this “X-communication”—I’ve been lovingly calling it—is the performance of masculinity online. This image of hypermasculinity within Christianity is not new, but it represents the policing of “proper” masculinity, promoting gender essentialism, within real life Christian men. Implicit in this performance is physical and emotional, sometimes even spiritual violence, against marginalized communities and even other men as a way to exercise power. By placing blame on marginalized communities, men conflate the deconstruction of toxic masculinity with a failure of social norms, or moral codes, that they believe they are required to enforce and that if they fail to do so, will lead to them losing access to their way of life.

Far-right actors use this fear to further toxic masculinity and connect it White supremacist, Christian nationalist, and anti-LGBTQ+ agendas—reinforcing the idea that when marginalized communities’ rights are protected and recognized, men will somehow lose their own rights, or rather privileges they perceive as rights, as a result. It is how far-right actors have socially conditioned men to become perfect soldiers of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States and have radicalized a generation of young men searching for their place in a rapidly changing world.

This series will delve into all of these topics—the performance of masculinity online, far-right masculinity’s overlap with Christian nationalism and white supremacy, homophobia and transphobia, and finally, radicalization. We invite you to be part of this conversation. As you read these pieces, and follow along on our own personal introductions about how masculinity has affected and been affected by our lives, we ask you to consider: what does this have to do with me? How is masculinity part of my own identities, how I consume media, how I function as a person, as a voter, as a political actor? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below on these Substack pieces.

We hope you will take away from this series an invitation to think critically about masculinity within your own life and an invitation to imagine a new path forward.

To kick off the conversation, Max and I have recorded a video (just under an hour long) where we discuss at length what this project will encompass, sharing insights about our backgrounds as queer people growing up Catholic and the personal experiences that shaped our understanding of gender, masculinity, and faith.

Thank you for reading this intro from our new masculinity series! The first post in the series is “No Country for Kings: Bishop Barron & the Catholic Performance of Masculinity.”

To support this project, please do consider a paid subscription to this substack, or a one-time tip (via credit card, cashapp, apple pay, and more) at https://ko-fi.com/maxwellkuzma.