The political debate promoted on social media by transgender and travestis candidates during the electoral campaign has been hijacked by ideological conflicts, political violence, debates about public security and disputes about the representativity of historically minorized groups. MonitorA’s study revealed that interactions between users and candidates reproduce the polarized scenario of national politics, in which transphobic comments build an additional layer of violence.

The observatory of online political violence – gathering InternetLab, Núcleo Jornalismo and AzMina Magazine – assessed discourses targeting 11 transgender and travestis candidates throughout the electoral campaigns to offices in the National Congress (see the methodology at the end of this article). The interactions with trans candidates focus around popular agendas in the current political scenario, hindering the discussion about other agendas and projects.

The defense of liberal parties and candidates was the main target of the attacks to trans women who were running for legislator offices. In spite of the violence and polarization seen on this electoral run, an important part of the interactions was occupied by messages of support to candidates.

According to the National Association of Transgenders and travestis (Antra), Brazil had 78 trans candidates in 2022. MonitorA followed online interactions with 11 candidates, of which three were elected: Erika Hilton (PSOL-SP) and Duda Salabert (PDT-MG), for Federal Deputy chairs, and Linda Brasil (PSOL-SE), for State Deputy. With 256,9 and 208,3 thousand votes, respectively, Erika and Duda will be the first trans women to ever hold seats on the Federal Chamber. Alexya Salvador (PT-SP), Atena Roveda (PDT-RS), Benny Briolly (PSOL-RJ), Biana Nunes (MDB-AL), Rafaela Esteffans (MDB-AP) and Robeyoncé Lima (PSOL-PE) will be alternate members. Paula Benett (PSB-DF) and Thabatta Pimenta (PSB-RN) were not elected. 

Between attacks and messages of support

The dynamics of interaction with the candidates varied between the social media platforms analyzed by the study. On Instagram, the study identified five groups of words related to the candidates, specially Hilton and Salabert, and to the elections in general, concentrated in messages of support after episodes of violence targeting the candidates.

Expressions such as “be strong”, “take care”, “be brave” and “resistance” frequently appeared to Duda Salabert (PDT-MG), in reference to the death threats that victimized her in August. Around Erika Hilton, expressions such as “community”, “unite”, “congress”, “popular”, “go”, and “let’s go” were found. A broader group of messages, distributed among all the monitored candidates, also brings terms as “hope”, “congratulations”, “incredible”, “wonderful”, “thrilling”, “joy” and “pride”.

“Generally, Instagram is a more welcoming media on organic posts. On a daily basis, we hardly receive any hate message, both on posts and inbox. The algorithm is limited to the bubble supporting us. Differently from Twitter, that is more open. It’s rare to find a post of mine there that will not receive hateful replies”, Salabert comments.

From Twitter, MonitorA initially collected 62 thousand tweets, but the analysis was focused on six thousand tweets containing potentially offensive terms. On this sample, hostile interactions with transgender and travestis candidates were concentrated on three groups: political and ideological polarization; public security and political violence; and representativity, identity and minorized groups. 

Hate speech

Tweets containing offensive words are divided in three major discursive categories:

Ideological dispute and political polarization

Debate about violence and guns

Identity agendas and minorized groups

Groups of words on offensive Twitter posts

Data show little relation among the three kinds of discourse

The first group gathers usual narratives in the presidential campaign: challenges to the next federal government in the areas of economy, education, health and corruption, besides mentions to Jair Bolsonaro (PL), Lula da Silva (PT) and Ciro Gomes (PDT). The second group of terms deals with public security and political violence, discussing episodes that took place outside the internet, and the firearms agenda. The third group focuses on representativity of socially minorized groups, gathering attacks and messages of support to the candidates. This separation indicates the existence of groups centered in certain debates. “the closeness of ideological dispute and political violence is not surprising, since it is hard to talk about politics without thinking about violence in these elections”, analyzes Rafaela Sinderski, PhD student in Political Science at UFPR and responsible for the monitoring of attacks and gender violence against journalists at the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji).

Fernanda K. Martins, director at InternetLab, anthropologist and one of MonitorA’s leaders, agrees: “The topics will not mix on the users’ discourses, because offline they are also split apart. There is still a long way for topics related to historically marginalized groups to mix with what we socially read as general politics”.

Transphobia’s many faces

The study also showed that Twitter users bet on transphobic discourses to attack the ideological stance of transgender and travestis candidates.

In order to understand the tone and content of the offenses, MonitorA analyzed a sample of one thousand tweets, randomly selected among the six thousand tweets that contained potentially offensive terms. Among them, 8,2% (82 tweets) were considered in fact offensive. Frequently, aggressors use the language of the trans universe disrespectfully, although they do not resort to slurs or perform direct attacks. In some cases, transphobia is shown by addressing transgender women as “he”, or transgender men as “she”, or, more aggressively, by using terms as “unresolved”, “undefined being”, “aberration”, “butch” and “faggot”.

Be ashamed of yourself. You’re not trans you’re lying creature

You’re a shame to the lgbt movement. FAKE! YOU NEVER WERE TRANS

Go away aberration, your father is ashamed of you.

I know this closeted one gets more beating than a deer. Hahaha ugly fag

“One of the challenges for content moderation relating to LGBTQIAPN+ population is to consider this group’s particularities, including those of treatment and identification. Using a masculine pronoun will not necessarily raise a red flag indicating there is a problem. The context becomes essential to identify whether there is transphobia”, Fernanda K. Martins explains.

Duda Salabert reports that the misuse of pronouns is a frequent form of attack to trans candidates, and it is often planned. “It’s so usual that we end up naturalizing it, it’s a part of language. But I see these threats that happen during the electoral campaign, the political violence and the transphobia as a single thing: it’s gender political violence and it’s orchestrated. I myself have suffered attacks from the very left wing of which I’m part. And I consider it transphobia because, of the many PDT candidates, the violence was directed only to me”, she highlights.

Transphobia in elections

Transphobia leads offenses to trans and travestis candidates on Twitter

Followed by intellectual discrediting, political ideology and misogyny

*Data referring to the collected sample of one thousand tweets

Some offenses are verbalized:

You can’t have this abortion thing because it discriminates women with trunks who can’t have an abortion.

More inclusion, please!

I didn’t even know this aberration existed

Dear undefined being, your mimimi [whining] won’t revoke a thing.

Other offenses are more discreet, as the refusal to the pronouns used by them: 

Said the demented leftopath trash of the gender ideology

Will you take the gun away from a policeman???

That’s not a decree, your imbecile!!!

Identity crisis is affecting your brain!

I know it’s a dream to disarm the police and let the criminals have guns!!

Which we’ll never do…

You’re disgusting and filthy

You’re a shame you idiot!

Transphobia is a crime! In 2019, an understanding of the Federal Supreme Court classified LGBTphobia as a hate crime.  

Although Instagram may be considered a more peaceful environment, there are also offenses and insults on the platform. Thabatta Pimenta (PSB), city councilor at Carnaúba dos Dantas (RN) and non-elected federal deputy candidate, saw an increase in transphobic attacks online and offline during the campaign. “After being victim of a transphobic attack in a shopping mall, when they wouldn’t let me use the women’s restroom, I posted a video on Instagram reporting what had happened and I was strongly attacked. I was campaigning and it was really hard. I decided to stop reading the comments. I didn’t even check my e-mail after that.”

Before being elected, Thabbata was a digital influencer with regional renown, and she says online violence against her has greatly increased during the presidential run. “The transphobic attacks are the worst. Before the problem at the restroom, I used to receive some attacks, but they were few, and due to an ideological issue: my support to Lula (PT)”.  

Filthy and unresolved creature, always seeing things through the wrong side of history. Guns save lives when used by goodwill citizens (different from your kind). Tell your guards to go unarmed from Monday on, how about that? Trash!!!

I respect who choose to assume what they are, she feels she’s a woman and that’s how she should be called. And if you’re looking at weenie, many macho men love one under the table

I got it: it’s like Lula, who is a thief and feels like an honest guy! Right

The candidates also see the attacks as coordinated actions conducted by right-wing conservative groups connected to the current president and candidate to reelection Jair Bolsonaro (PL). “It also happens that profiles from Bolsonaro’s supporters get together to take our accounts down. The unverified ones suffer the most”, Pimenta reports.

Salabert agrees: “The greatest difficulty on these platforms is that dialogue tools and reporting options are limited. My profile is verified and, still, my reports are rarely considered”. She believes that the automated process of content moderation disfavors the victims, because teams and algorithms are faulty when identifying episodes of transphobia. An example of that are radical feminist groups posting images of trans people before their transition. “We report as incitement to hatred, but who assesses the content won’t understand why, because it’s a picture of me, after all. There’s a lack of more efficient tools for reporting transphobia”, she affirms.

Fernanda K. Martins explains that technologies can also be discriminatory, and one of the reasons for this is the limited presence of LGBTQIAPN+, women and black people on this field of work. “The needs of trans people and travestis won’t be the same of cisgenders. This distinction needs to be considered by content moderation policies on platforms”, she adds. 

Out of 82 tweets considered an offense or insult, only six are currently down. Some of them have been excluded by the authors, other are on suspended accounts. The remaining 76 attacks are still online. Out of 20 tweets tagged as transphobic, only one has been excluded or resulted in the suspension of the user’s account.

Social media as amplifiers

After transphobic comments, insults as “hypocrite” and “ridiculous” are the next largest category for hostility (18 tweets), followed by swearing, with terms as “imbecile”, “stupid” and “donkey”, that promote intellectual discrediting of the candidates (15). The ones related to political ideology (12) use terms as “militonta” (a neologism joining the words ‘activist’ and ‘fool’), “psolenta” (a derogatory way to refer to supporters of the left-wing party PSOL)  and “disgusting PT supporter”. Misogynistic offenses (8) accuse candidates of “mimimi” (a term that mocks a whine or complaint) among other offensive comments.

Insults and offenses to trans candidates amplify a kind of violence that is lethal in real life, especially in the country that kills more trans women and travestis in the world, according to a Transgender Europe report. The attacks are aggravated through specific features of the platforms, as the long lifespan of contents. “Each new exposition to an attack can become a way of re-victimizing, whether it is today or ten years from now, when the post comes about again. She can receive threats that, even when not fulfilled, will bring huge impacts to the life of these women”, Sinderski adds.

That was the case of Duda Salabert, who received four death threats during the initial ten days of campaign, and other four threats at the final stage, all of them by e-mail. In the last two months, the now elected federal deputy has worn a bullet-proof vest and counted on enhanced security. On one of the e-mails, she received a link to a site with details about how she would be assassinated. “These death threats were posed to dismantle the campaign, to unsettle me. It was a calculated action made by people who understand about politics, because it happened at important moments for the campaign: the beginning and the end. That was orchestrated to intimidate our political action”, she affirms.

In such a violent context, messages of support from electors appeared online to balance the political game. “I went through a few traumas, but I see politics as a place to work in, so, I focus and I don’t think about this violence”, Thabatta Pimenta states.

Besides the candidates’ experiences, the presence of endorsing tweets and comments also helps to understand the dynamics of social media. “Realizing that, although candidates are targeted by transphobia, there are sympathetic people out there, is important to see how social media can shelter different points of view. The differences between Twitter and Instagram show that we can’t generalize experiences on social media. We need to have an attentive look at the diversity of interactions”, Martins adds.

Methodology

Between August 17 and October 2, we monitored 75,851 mentions on Twitter and 23,487 comments on Instagram posts from 11 candidates. In the first stage, of lexical analysis, we removed from the sample repeated tweets and comments, posts with nothing but names and numbers of candidates, lines with slangs, emojis, special characters and names with the most quoted @. We, then, analyzed the remaining messages: 62,254 tweets and 12,158 Instagram comments. 

For this article, MonitorA carried out an automated lexical analysis though the software Iramuteq, that allows the creation of graphics of Correspondence Factor Analysis, composed of clouds of statistically relevant words. This stage allowed us to identify the predominant topics on the debate that included the monitored candidates, both on Twitter and Instagram. We also observed how words and topics were related on the monitored contents. This kind of analysis contributes to the identification of “bubbles” of conversation on social media. 

The second stage consisted of an individual analysis of one thousand tweets, randomly selected from a sample of six thousand tweets containing offensive words. This stage sought to identify shades and subtleties on discourses that were not contemplated on the lexicon.

The following candidates were monitored by the study:

Alexya Salvador – São Paulo – PT – Alternate

Atena Roveda – Rio Grande do Sul – PDT – Alternate

Benny Briolly – Rio de Janeiro – PSOL – Alternate

Bianca Nunes – Alagoas – MDB – Alternate

Duda Salabert – Minas Gerais – PDT – Elected

Erika Hilton – São Paulo – PSOL – Elected

Linda Brasil – Sergipe – PSOL – Elected

Paula Benett – Distrito Federal – PSB – Not elected

Rafaela Esteffans – Amapá – MDB – Alternate

Robeyoncé Lima – Pernambuco – PSOL – Alternate

Thabatta Pimenta – Rio Grande do Norte – PSB – Not elected