God is a good excuse

Connor Tomlinson is 27 years old, a regular commentator on GB News and a self-described ‘reactionary Catholic Zoomer’. But this wasn’t always the case. In a YouTube interview from 2024, Tomlinson says he was baptized as a baby but was ‘not a regular church attendee’. It was only, he says, in 2019 when conservative Christian friends inspired him to ‘make the grown-up decision to just believe it and see what happens’ that he started attending weekly mass and was confirmed as a Catholic.

Soon afterwards, he began writing opinion pieces for Conservative media outlets before becoming a contributor to a group called Young Voices. Supported by the USbased Koch Foundation, the group helps to place young, right-wing commentators in prominent media roles. Since then, Tomlinson’s social media channels (he has more than 100,000 followers apiece on YouTube and X) have hosted hundreds of videos from a conservative Catholic perspective – ranging from rants about immigration to chats about everything that is supposedly wrong with women.

In one YouTube clip from 2023, Tomlinson and disgraced priest Calvin Robinson claimed that ‘seeking attention on social media [was] a form of digital infidelity … makes your man feel unwanted, and profanes the sanctity of your relationship’. Criticising both liberal and conservative women, whom Tomlinson referred to as ‘titty Tories’, they suggested that posting selfies online negated any worthwhile work these women may have done and advised them, quoting from the New Testament, to focus on ‘finding a good husband’.

Tomlinson and Robinson – and other Christian rightwing figures espousing misogynistic views – are gaining a disturbingly large following of young men, including in the UK. Over the last 20 years, the political divide between young British men and women has grown, with the former more likely to identify as right-wing and, according to a 2024 study from King’s College London, to feel negatively about the impact of feminism.

There has also been a growing narrative around disaffected young men turning to religion. Last year, the Bible Society reported a five-fold increase in the number of 18-24-year-old men attending church services in the UK since 2018. The report was based on self-reported data, and doesn’t reflect an actual rise in recorded attendee numbers, but it was nonetheless seized on as evidence that this demographic is turning to faith. What does seem to be true is that parts of the ‘manosphere’ – the umbrella term for men’s rights activists, pick-up artists, incels and others – are going Christian (or claiming to). It’s a shift that is being leveraged to gain legitimacy and influence for their misogynistic ideas in the outside world – including in political circles, such as via Tomlinson’s close friend and former Reform UK party candidate, 29-year-old Joseph Robertson.

Whereas the leaders of the manosphere often express a blatant hatred of women and a focus on manipulative pick-up techniques, figures like Tomlinson rely more on ideas of the perfect Christian family. But dig a little deeper and the lines between the two worlds begin to blur.

Heading

Take US author and so-called ‘Godfather of the Manosphere’ Rollo Tomassi (real name George Miller). Tomassi, who gained fame with his ‘Rational Male’ book series, teaches his followers that women with multiple sexual partners are ‘low-value’. He has also written that women use sexism as an excuse for their own unsuitability for professional careers.

For Tomlinson, women are unfit for doing 9-5 jobs, because they are ‘impressionable, led by material incentives and easily manipulated’. Therefore, he claims, it is the job of a man to ‘be the vanguard against the degeneracy that has wasted so many fertile years and the potential of women who are not ugly, who could’ve been someone’s wife’. Both he and Robertson are keen to blame all manner of societal problems on the contraceptive pill.

The only real difference is that, for Tomassi, these misogynistic beliefs legitimize men using and abusing women because that’s what ‘nature intended’. Meanwhile, for Tomlinson and other Christian figures, it compels men to take women under their wing and teach them how to live because that is ‘God’s plan’. In both worldviews, women are responsible for the downfall of humanity and only valued when serving the whims and needs of men.

But despite this overlap, both Tomlinson and Robertson are strongly critical of the manosphere. Tomlinson believes it ‘perpetuates the paradigm of the industrial and sexual revolutions … which made men and women so maladaptive and unattracted to each other in the first place’. Robertson appears to agree with this and has written florid critiques of self-appointed manosphere leader Andrew Tate and the perils of pornography.

When we reached out to Tomlinson about his statements and their inherent misogyny, he told us that: ‘The time I spend with my wife, mother, grandmothers, friends, etc. matters more to me than if someone I don’t know calls me mean on the internet … Men should be considerate, compassionate, and chivalric toward the women they love and who love them. Women should return that compassion and consideration in kind. We may do it in different ways, but that’s the core of it. Ideology obscures those relationships, makes people think in zero-sum terms about competing categories, and is making people miserable … So you’re welcome to engage with what I’ve written and said throughout my career, and I hope you do so in good faith. But I don’t feel compelled to defend myself against such a bad faith charge as ‘You’re a misogynist.’ I would rather spend time with my wife.’

Heading

Tomlinson may want us to think that his religious beliefs are in no way misogynistic. But the reframing of manosphere theories as the ‘Christian’ way to think and live has been going on for several years, and is evident when we look at the trajectory of certain figures within the manosphere. Daryush Valizadeh (aka Roosh V) was one of the first. A key figure in the early manosphere, he taught a version of Tomassi’s beliefs as a pick-up artist – a man who uses coercion and manipulation to pick up women – via his lucrative Return of Kings website. In 2019, after disappearing from the scene, he returned with a blog post explaining that he had ‘received a message while on mushrooms’ and was taking the movement in a new direction.

Having replaced the so-called Red Pill (a trope where ‘taking the Red Pill’ reveals the unsettling truth of reality, in this case revealing women’s ‘true intentions’) with the ‘God Pill’, his commitment to misogyny remained the same, only now it was fueled by the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church. While the rebrand lost him many fans, it opened the door for a new wave of manosphere influencers keen to present their misogyny as piety. No longer seeking to humiliate women by coercing them into sex, they were now ‘good guys’ working to reinstil the supposed natural order of things.

Since then, other men have come into this space; like Tomlinson, Robertson, Calvin Robinson and other protege’s of far-right student organization Turning Point UK. Justifying their hatred of women via pseudo-intellectual arguments and with reference to Christian teachings, they are far more appealing to men who wish to subjugate the other sex while avoiding associations with the bare-faced aggression and criminality of figures like Andrew Tate.

Even more alarmingly, convincing themselves and Some Reform candidates are pushing these views others that they are educated men working for God, these men have muscled their way into speaking engagements and onto national news channels like GB News and Talk. T he groups they associate with include the anti-LGBT Christian advocacy group ADF Legal (which advised the Orthodox Conservatives, a pressure group with which Robertson is closely involved); the Family Education Trust, a group with evangelical ties whose policy suggestions have made it into parliamentary discussions (Robinson and Tomlinson attended their conference last year); and anti-abortion group Right to Life, for whom Tomlinson, Robertson and Robinson are all advocates. These groups seek to limit access to abortion, prevent children from learning about the LGBT community and push Christian and traditionalist beliefs into policymaking.

Framing their arguments as the only way to ‘save’ the west, the people who truly benefit are white Christian men and the women who obey them. Feminists, people of colour, Muslims, the LGBT community and others have no role in their brave new world.

Heading

Many of these men also deny that they are ‘far right’, while holding beliefs in line with both ethnic and Christian nationalism. Ethno-nationalists believe that identity is based on ethnicity and culture, whilst Christian nationalists believe that Christianity is the only way to save race and nation. In both cases the words ‘race’, ‘culture’ and ‘nation’ relate only to the white, western world.

Examples of both are present in most of Tomlinson’s output. In an interview with the Daily Heretic, a YouTube channel hosted by journalist Andrew Gold who focuses on ‘culture war’ topics from a right-wing perspective, Tomlinson said he was not an ethno-nationalist. But he also claimed that former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was not ‘nationally English’ and that only those who could trace their British ancestry back to the Neolithic era were truly British. He believes that Britain is a Christian country; a bold claim given that less than half of those asked on the most recent census identified as Christian and 37 per cent claimed no religion at all.

These attitudes appear to be spreading, and are voiced by some Reform UK party candidates, including Joseph Robertson. In a video posted to X last year, Robertson claimed that ‘the natal crisis gripping the west’ was happening because ‘the sacred act of motherhood … has been demeaned and discarded’ by feminists, which has ‘disrupted the natural harmony between men and women’ and was ‘derailing the proper course of western history’.

Part of the appeal of these figures comes down to delivery. Whilst the angry rants of Andrew Tate are easily dismissed, the calm manner in which Tomlinson et al present their ideas makes them more accessible. Whether they are telling their audience that they need to ‘bring back women shaming women’ to enforce modesty, or that men should be ‘the rock upon which [their wife’s] emotional waves may break’, it is delivered with the calm confidence of a Man Who Knows What He Is Talking About.

And while many manosphere leaders are actively grifting their audience, Tomlinson and his cohort appear to believe their own hype. These are not angry old men who will wrap themselves in the flag while getting arrested alongside Tommy Robinson; they present themselves as young, relevant ‘intellectuals’. For an audience of lost young men, uncertain of their role in life, that is more than enough to trust them.

Heading

In the course of writing my book Incel: The Weaponization of Misogyny, I have had extensive conversations with youth leaders and teachers. They have shown that there is a clear crisis of belonging among boys and men in their teens and early twenties. They have friends, but the friendships stop at the school gates – and a lack of community spaces sees them confined to their bedrooms and screens. The algorithms are designed to promote the most lucrative content, which is often the most controversial.

Faced with a polarized, rage-filled digital world, which punishes young men as either ‘Nazis’ or ‘soy boys’ (progressive men who are deemed less masculine because they care about women), it is possible to see the appeal of the Christian manosphere’s calm utopia, which seems to offer a middle ground.

But aside from increasing support for the far right and growing levels of misogyny, Tomlinson et al are offering young men a version of a life which is both socially and financially unfeasible. For the vast majority, it is no longer possible to survive on a single income. As with the tradwife movement, which sees influencers advocating for women to quit their jobs, marry and start a homestead, Christian manosphere figures are recommending that young men seek out a simple life with a simple wife, while they themselves walk the corridors of power funded by podcast subscriptions.

In the offline world, parts of the Christian establishment are taking steps to separate themselves from these divisive figures and boost their image as welcoming, egalitarian spaces. Last year, Calvin Robinson was dismissed from a US diocese of the Anglican Catholic Church after he appeared to mimic Elon Musk’s ‘Nazi-style salute’ at their National Pro-Life Summit, and he has never been ordained in the Church of England despite completing his training at Oxford. A year earlier, the Free Church of England fired one of their reverends for posting multiple online videos in which he criticized ‘woke’ topics and referred to progressive female ministers as ‘witches’. And the new Archbishop of Wales is an openly gay woman.

But for those in the Christian manosphere, this simply provides further proof of the British Christian establishment ‘going woke’ and will see them drift deeper into extreme orthodoxy to justify their own positions.

Heading

Thankfully, there are many secular groups working with young men. Last year, Mike Nicholson, CEO of the group Progressive Masculinity, told me how his team were going into schools and creating spaces for young men to talk about issues in the online world. Explaining that they ‘don’t teach boys to be men’ but ‘give boys the agency and the freedom to design the man that they want to be’, Nicholson said that when boys were challenged on harmful beliefs in a safe environment the response was ‘phenomenal’. He believes in the value of discussion. ‘This idea that boys and men don’t like to talk is an absolute fallacy,’ he said. ‘In the right spaces, somewhere they feel safe, they love to.’

Parents concerned about their sons can also improve their communication. The PACE model, developed by an educational psychologist to help children through trauma, can be adapted to almost any family situation. An acronym that stands for Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy, it describes how to approach concerning child behaviour without showing fear or censure.

Young men are bombarded with digital hate on a daily basis. It is our job to provide them with a nurturing, safe environment in which they can be encouraged to think critically about online content and the way they interact with it. It’s vital to remember that young men consuming harmful content are seeking answers to internal questions, not validation for pre-existing beliefs. If we engage with them, we can lead them to healthier sources than the Christian nationalist movement.