On December 7, the eve of the Feast of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, the Catholic representation of the sinless Virgin Mary, thousands of protesters gathered in over 20 Brazilian cities to petition a wave of unbridled violence against women. In Sao Paulo, the country’s largest city and the epicenter of gruesome events, almost 10,000 people carried signs demanding change. They carried makeshift placards declaring, “Silence kills – stop femicide!,” “Neither monsters nor psychopaths: MEN are killing us!” and “A Brazilian woman is killed every two minutes,” and called for legal abortion and harsher penalties for sex offenders. The crowd was awash in photographs to honor hundreds of femicide victims.
Artists and intellectuals, social movement leaders, representatives of the Black Movement and politicians from left-leaning parties joined together in many cities to support women’s rights. Protestors carried placards saying, “Marielle lives.” This message references Rio de Janeiro’s former councilwoman, Marielle Franco, a women’s rights activist who was assassinated in 2018. The statement reminded everyone that violence against women is not constrained to domestic relations, as remarked by Marielle’s sister, Minister for Racial Equality Anielle Franco, in the event in the capital of Brasília.
Not even five blocks ahead of the Sao Paulo demonstration, however, 1,200 people had gathered for a different cause: hardline supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, organized by Sao Paulo’s vice-mayor, Colonel Mello Araújo, demanded amnesty for him. Bolsonaro is a notorious misogynist who recently lost his house arrest privileges after using a soldering iron to tamper with his ankle monitor. As his ally, Sao Paulo State Governor Tarcísio de Freitas has cut 96% of the budget to fight violence against women since 2024; this move mirrors Bolsonaro, who cut 90% of the funding to fight gender-based violence between 2020 and 2022.
With support of the police, neo-Pentecostal pastors and controversial characters of Brazilian politics, Araújo told the media there was only one agenda for protests that Sunday: amnesty for Bolsonaro. It was not a lack of judgment or a faux pas by the city’s second-in-command, but a clear message from the right-wing state and municipal governments that the safety of 54% of Brazilians does not matter.
Misogyny in Brazil
Brazil is no stranger to femicide and all forms of violence against women. Since colonial times, sexism and racism have been intertwined, with a patriarchal Christian elite imposing gender roles and behavioral standards on a largely multicultural population. From the struggle of women to get basic voting and labor rights to the ongoing fight to achieve full body autonomy, Brazil has mistreated its female population for centuries.
Misogyny is still a socially acceptable political weapon, as former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff — the only woman to ever hold that position — experienced during her term and impeachment. Brazilian women earn less than men despite being better educated, and experience worse life conditions. Certain professions, such as those in the law field, underrepresent women despite them graduating in higher numbers than men. Sexism runs rampant in Brazilian science and higher education. Women in Brazil suffer discrimination at work for getting pregnant despite law protections, are subject to sexual harassment and have poorer medical care, as doctors ignore their complaints more often.
Racial and income inequality aggravate these issues. Domestic violence occurs in all female demographics but is higher for young, black and lower-income women. Poor black women in Brazil are targets of triple discrimination, despite this demographic being the largest in public universities thanks to affirmative action. The insidious combination of racism and misogyny, however, has yet to be extirpated from Brazilian society if the vulnerability of this population, who represents 28% of Brazilians, is to be reduced.
Progress in femicide law and behavioral change
The country has seen strides to reduce gender inequality since the 1988 promulgation of the most recent Brazilian Constitution, which institutes gender equality in its 5th Article. Previous civil law changes improved the agency for women to remove themselves from dangerous relationships. For example, the nation prohibited divorce until 1977, when it became a legal process, but still required a cause and a mandatory minimum 12-month period of legal separation. The whole process could be contested, generally by the man, at any moment. The law was generally applied unfavorably to women, especially if they were accused of adultery. Courts could only implement the current “no-fault” process after a constitutional amendment in 2010 dispensed with the need for judicial agreement. This led couples to divorce in record numbers for several years.
“Crimes of honor,” which practically allowed men to kill their wives, were only outlawed in 1991. Adultery, often used as a defense in domestic violence cases against women, was decriminalized in 2005. One of the most infamous cases in Brazil, in which both the moral slander of a woman’s behavior and the “defense of honor” were used to acquit a murderer, was recently adapted to film: the 1974 femicide of socialite Ângela Diniz by entrepreneur Doca Street, her then-boyfriend, with four close-range gunshots to her face. In his 1976 trial, he pleaded guilty of “killing for love,” initially received a two-year prison sentence and immediately saw release.
The trial focused on Diniz’s “immoral lifestyle;” she was separated but not divorced from her husband, and therefore was an adulterer and sinner. The opposite of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, the media described Diniz as a woman who was “begging to be killed.” Public prosecutors appealed, and Street was re-sentenced in 1981, this time to 15 years in prison. The media circus led to one of the first campaigns against domestic violence in Brazil: “Quem ama não mata” (“Those who love do not kill”).
The most important legal turning point came with the creation of the landmark Maria da Penha Law in 2006, based on the infamous 1983 femicide attempt against Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes by her husband, after the authorities ignored her pleas for help. The case ended up in the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American States in 1998 — it found Brazil negligent in her case.
The new law defined domestic violence more broadly, including, in addition to physical violence, psychological, sexual, moral and patrimonial violence by partners regardless of gender or cohabitation, understanding these as a breach of human rights. It also created specialized courts and support mechanisms for victims, including shelters and protection measures for women threatened by their partners, and increased sentences for offenders. Its efficiency, however, is highly dependent on sociocultural factors and regional implementation. Some indicators suggest the law has decreased hospitalizations and deaths caused by domestic violence, and increased case notifications.
In 2015, Brazil enacted the Femicide Law, adding femicide to the Penal Code as an aggravated form of homicide and a hate crime, with much higher sentences. Its implementation still encounters sociocultural and regional obstacles. Then in 2023, after two years of deliberation in the Brazilian Supreme Court, the “legitimate defense of honor” argument, used by Street in his first trial, was definitively declared unconstitutional. It cannot be called on any phase of a femicide case, from the investigation to the trial by jury.
Beyond legal instruments to protect women, federal, state and municipal governments, social movements and even companies created strong campaigns that reviewed traditional Brazilian attitudes that fostered domestic violence. In 2018, Magazine Luiza, one of Brazil’s largest retail stores — famously founded and headed by women — picked on the old saying, “Em briga de marido e mulher, ninguém mete a colher” (“No one should poke their nose into a husband-and-wife fight”). The campaign urged the population to “yes, poke [their] noses” and intervene, call the police or anonymously denounce cases. The slogan later found adoption by the National Campaign to Fight Violence Against Women, or “Lilac August,” which defines a yearly month-long awareness campaign about the Maria da Penha Law.
The effectiveness of campaigns appears to depend on adopting the behaviors recommended by them and the multiplication of behavior-changing ideas through social contact, or “word-of-mouth” actions.
Misogyny, Bolsonarism and Brazil’s digital sphere
Violence data is tracked by the Institute for Applied Economic Research, a public institution linked to the Brazilian Ministry of Planning and Budget. Its interactive publication Atlas da Violência (“Atlas of Violence”) pools homicide rates from 1980 up to 2022, allowing users to select particular years and states, gender, race and age. However, it does not discriminate between femicide, manslaughter or felony murder. Overall murder rates fluctuate in the country, but have been declining since 2017.
The murder rate of women, however, declined from 5/100,000 in 1997 to 3.8/100,000 in 2022, including manslaughter and robbery-homicides. A more detailed view comes from the Observatory on Violence Against Women, a committee from the Brazilian Federal Senate designated to study femicide rates and accompany legal cases. It identifies an unsettling increase in this type of crime since 2022, with the state of Sao Paulo having the highest numbers in 2025. Renata Furbino, a professor of criminal law from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, affirms that, despite the laws already in place to protect women, it is necessary to understand the present context of society to interpret and combat these trends.
Digital campaigners from #ShePersisted, a non-profit organization fighting misogyny in global politics, published a study about Brazil that highlighted the weaponization of misogyny against Brazilian women in public life. They identified organized actors who coordinated social media attacks towards women in leadership roles, most connected to politicians such as Bolsonaro and his allies, and pseudo-intellectuals such as the deceased self-proclaimed philosopher and far-right guru Olavo de Carvalho.
Men have so frequently targeted women in the Brazilian digital sphere that entire books are published on the phenomenon, alleging that Big Tech companies organize and foster the attacks. A study from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro shows that digital misogyny is a business model from social media platforms, with algorithms pushing disinformation and fraudulent ads that demean women in all digital channels. Misogyny is profitable, and tech companies found a gold cauldron in Brazil, as the nation’s digital presence is one of the largest worldwide. Dubbed the “Social Media Capital of the Universe,” Brazil is the second largest market on Facebook, with over 65 million users. Its netizens spend more than nine hours a day interacting with others online.
This is such a hotbed for social media misuse that Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes fined X owner Elon Musk for circumventing Brazilian laws against hate speech and spreading disinformation. Moraes even temporarily blocked X in the whole country until Musk paid the fine.
Misogynistic efforts from Big Tech platforms are growing more hostile. Recently, Meta blocked content from organizations advising on reproductive rights across the world, regardless of whether abortion, queer rights and transgender support are legal in a country. These accounts enable cisgender and transgender women to deal with body autonomy and domestic and social violence, providing an anonymous, discrete way to access information and guidance while they seemingly browse their social media.
Progressive lawmakers are still fighting for pieces of legislation that may ameliorate this shameful scenario in Brazil. In 2024, after intense lobbying by Big Tech companies with far-right congressmen, then-President of the Chamber of Deputies Arthur Lira discarded a vital bill meant to regulate the spread of fake news through social media. The caucus all but stopped any bills trying to halt hate speech in social media, forcing the Supreme Court to expand the responsibility of digital platforms with the content they host. Another bill, which legally equates misogyny to racism, would make social media bullying against women a non-bailable offense and carry higher sentences. The ongoing public consultation of the Senate about this bill has not yet reached the greater public, but already has over 70% support for its approval.
The digital sphere also fostered and spread throughout Brazil imported movements such as “incel culture,” “red pilling” and the “manosphere,” bringing in concepts such as masculine supremacy, extreme misogyny and justification for gender-based violence. Together with far-right ideology, which is intrinsically linked to gender-based violence, neo-Pentecostal churches have pushed to end gender equality for at least a decade. They have found social media perfect for convincing battered, socially-isolated and hopeless young men that they are divinely entitled to rule over, and even kill, the women who reject them.
Far-right populism, such as that personified by Bolsonarism, attracts low-income men during economic crises, while women tend to be attracted to progressive movements under the same circumstances. Misogyny may be the differential, also fueled by racism and cruelty, to the point that Brazil now has a saying when gender- and race-based violence happens: “Nem todo Bolsonarista, mas sempre um Bolsonarista” (“Not all Bolsonarists, but always a Bolsonarist”). Femicide skyrocketed during Bolsonaro’s term, and researchers understood this hike in numbers to be connected to a virtual “licence to kill” granted by the presidency.
A perfect example of the explosive mix of misinterpreted mythical Christian biblical masculinity, militarism, the money-oriented Prosperity Gospel and far-right conservatism is the Legendários movement, created by an evangelical pastor in Guatemala and imported to Brazil in 2017. Claiming to transform “woke” and “weak” men into “heroes,” the movement charges high fees to take men on hikes in nature, teaching them to bottle up their feelings and “soldier up” when in distress. This strategy led to two deaths in 2025.
Despite claiming to teach Christian love, on March 8 — International Women’s Day — two Legendários members violently attacked a woman in the city of Cuiabá, state of Mato Grosso, beating her in front of security cameras after an argument at a restaurant’s playground. The group later expelled the two wealthy entrepreneurs after social backlash. Progressive religious leaders continue to criticize the movement and point out the link between this Christian interpretation and increasing femicide numbers.
Digital media platforms became fertile ground for Bolsonarism and the growth of misogynistic hate speech in Brazil, a phenomenon that is involved with the attempted coup on January 8, 2023, and receives strong support from Big Tech companies. When the Bolsonarist caucus in Brazilian legislative houses became a majority during Bolsonaro’s 2019–2023 presidential term, it employed disruptive strategies to create mayhem during votes on human rights, gender equality and race equality topics, using inflammatory moments as snippets for social media. For the 2023 election, they used Telegram to question the validity of Brazil’s electoral system and, as the main group inside “deep web” environments and the “influence-sphere,” managed to gain an even larger majority for the current legislative term.
Using social media techniques such as polarization, false identity, emotion, defamation (often targeting women, ethnic minorities and LGBTQIA+ politicians) and conspiracy theories, far-right politicians and influencers abuse digital platforms to destabilize social discourse and feed into Brazil’s ingrained prejudices. They produce virtue signaling short videos inside Congress and post them on TikTok, Instagram and X, showing far-right politicians preaching against “woke” congressmen, in particular female, transgender and black left-wing representatives. In January 2025, Chief of Staff Rui Costa warned that the opposition in the legislature behaves like “spoiled brats” and one cannot build hospitals with “preachy videos.”
The most recent push to achieve amnesty for the perpetrators of the coup attempt brought utter chaos and authoritarian moves by conservative President of the Chamber of Deputies Hugo Motta, of the Republicanos party. On December 9, Motta ordered Legislative Police to forcefully remove a progressive lawmaker, cut the live feed of the TV Câmara public television network — an unprecedented move after re-democratization — and expel the press from the building, physically harming journalists like Universo Online reporter Carolina Nogueira. Bolsonarist lawmakers took the opportunity to pronounce their prejudices and hate speech for their audience, and instances of violence against women repeated on the tribune.
The next night, on December 10, Congress held a vote to impeach left-wing Congressman Glauber Braga for kicking a far-right activist from the Movimento Brasil Livre (Free Brazil Movement). The debate inflamed Bolsonarist congressman Paulo Bilynskyj, the proud grandson of a Nazi soldier who is infamous for his involvement in his girlfriend’s controversial death. At the session, Bilynskyj threatened Congresswoman Duda Salabert, a transwoman, saying he would “break her face” if he could. Motta then called Congresswoman Benedita da Silva, a black 83-year-old veteran of the center-left Workers’ Party, a liar, told her that her party was against the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution and cut her microphone mid-speech. Da Silva managed to return to the microphone and read him the signatures on her copy of the Constitution: She was actually the Third Secretary of the Constitutional Commission.
A bizarre tale can serve as a summary of Brazil’s situation of mixing neo-Pentecostal religions, Bolsonarism and femicide. A film about Bolsonaro’s life, Dark Horse, is in production in Brazil, directed by American filmmaker Cyrus Nowrasteh, written by Bolsonarist congressman and actor Mário Frias and starring actor Jim Caviezel as Bolsonaro. The production company, headed by executive producer Karina Ferreira da Gama, has no experience in cinema. Yet it received 108 million reais (over $19.5 million) to install overpriced Wi-Fi systems in Sao Paulo’s low-income communities — which it never properly delivered — and raised funds for neo-Pentecostal festivals.
The whole convoluted deal, as described by news agency Intercept Brasil, involves large amounts of public funds being transferred to the production company and its subcontractors. One of these subcontractors, Alex Leandro Bispo dos Santos, received over 12 million reais (over $2.1 million) from Dark Horse’s production company and inadvertently helped trigger the massive protests against femicide around the country. On November 29, following a violent domestic altercation, Santos’s severely beaten 25-year-old wife Maria Katiane Gomes da Silva died after falling from the tenth floor of their apartment building. Police arrested him a few days later, when investigators doubted his account of her suicide, and abundant evidence of his violence came to light.
Brazil’s femicide struggle persists
The actions taken by Motta and the Bolsonarist caucus in Congress to pass a disguised amnesty to Bolsonaro and the military involved in the coup attempt triggered yet another country-wide mobilization. Called by popular progressive organizations in just three days, supporters held massive gatherings in all Brazilian capitals, with calls to remove Motta from the presidency of the Congress, and continued calls for indigenous rights and against femicide. In the city of Recife, feminist groups and female politicians made their presence known. The northeastern Brazilian capital has a strong feminist tradition and has acted as a haven to guarantee legal abortion rights that other Brazilian states denied.
When asked their views on the anti-femicide protests, the women who attended illustrated how important these mobilizations were. Artist Lia Letícia, who works with the relations of patriarchalism, race and gender, expressed that femicide has always happened in Brazil. Since the European invasion in the 16th century, indigenous women, and later trafficked African women, were raped, traded and killed with impunity. Violence against women is a tragic part of Brazilian past and present. “Now, we are coming together and talking about it, so this is a step forward,” Lia Letícia affirms.
Cultural producer and actress Irma Brown agrees that femicide has always been present. “Brazil was born from oppression, so all gender-based, racial and class violence end up falling on women, especially women of color,” she says. The current situation allows for free discussion, but violence against women is still naturalized across Brazil and bringing the topic to the streets can illuminate this issue. Lia Letícia and Brown believe that instead of an actual growth in femicide in the last months, we are seeing high profile cases and open dialogue on the topic, rather than an actual increase of numbers. In fact, recent governmental statistics show an overall decline in cases of lethal violence against women between 2023 and 2024.
Photographer Camila Silva agrees that these cases were highly publicized, and the media pushed the discussion forward, but women faced gender-based violence all their lives in Brazil. “We all know friends and relatives in some sort of domestic violence situation, and hear about femicide cases all the time,” she says. She believes there was a turning point for women’s rights born from collective action which allowed for women to get positions of power, but masculine fragility could be the reason for many of these instances of violence. Illustrating this is the case in which a public servant killed his two female superiors at a public technical school in São Paulo, as he could not accept being “ordered around” by women. Silva feels men should be part of the conversation and take action: “A man can say ‘well, I do not do that,’ but he needs to act more strongly, as he is actually part of this constant struggle.”
Artist Juliana Notari points out that the recent cases were not only in Sao Paulo: Highly-publicized cases came from several Brazilian states, and she agrees that Brazil has always been a violent place to women, with statistics being aggravated by race and class. A shocking case happened in Recife, where a man provoked a fire and killed his wife and four children. “We had an extremely misogynous far-right president, and the far-right is notorious for its violence, racism and machismo. He validated this type of violence.” Far-right politicians still act in the Congress and Senate, and social media pushed the global swing to the extreme right, but “the same digital platforms that feed red-pilling are also used to push forward fourth-wave feminism.” She urges people to focus on black women, the most common victims, and to push left-wing leaders to better understand the demands of women, as they are still ignoring crucial issues like the right to abortion.
Notari’s 2020 artistic intervention, titled “Diva,” which was exhibited during Bolsonaro’s term and represented historical violences against women and nature, went viral around the world and incurred the wrath of far-right politicians and bloggers. Olavo de Carvalho used his platform to offend the artist and make her a target for disinformation and harassment. The installation earned praise and raised important discussions of patriarchalism, gender violence and body autonomy, and how society is still uncomfortable with female issues.
Dr. Ana Paula Portella, a sociologist and author of the book, Como Morre uma Mulher? (“How Does a Woman Die?”), has been researching violence against women since the 1970s. She sees this new wave of protests to combat violence against women as a very positive step, reminding that this movement has been organized for more than 40 years.
“We have a very solid, very strong social feminist movement, and since before Ângela Diniz’s murder we were organizing in this direction, to denounce patriarchal violence,” Portella says. She explains that despite the last 20 years of governmental support through policies to fight gender-based violence, and an excellent structure to remove women from dangerous situations, society itself offered very little support. “We have seen efficient policies and services at municipal, state and federal levels, but we haven’t seen such massive social support. [The recent cases] were a shock, and I am seeing this popular manifestation for the first time. We had the #MeToo movement in 2015, but it was almost restricted to social media. This time, it spilled over to the streets.”
Portella says that Brazil has been a part of the White Ribbon Campaign, a global action movement of men and boys to end male violence against women, for almost 30 years. But only now are men, including the Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, speaking publicly that “this struggle is also mine.” It is crucial we make it clear that violence against women is a men’s, not a women’s, problem: “Women are victims of a man’s motion, and to end violence it is necessary to interrupt this motion.” She affirms that men become violent by repeating a set of attitudes, words, thoughts and concepts, which unfortunately are also introjected by some women. Men must take responsibility to stop the violence.
“I see these movements of the last two weeks in a very positive way, if this trend is maintained,” she adds. We need to wait and see if this was a fatuous initiative to gain popularity on social media or a genuine effort. “Men need to stop beating up women, and they won’t stop just because of the threat of 40 years in jail.” This comments refers to the changes in law that increased the sentences for rape, domestic violence and femicide, including the creation of a new criminal classification for such cases. “It is not the punishment that solves the problem: the problem will be solved when men say, ‘I will stop.’”
[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
The post To Live Without Fear: Brazilian Protests Denounce Rise in Gender-Based Violence appeared first on Fair Observer.
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