This article presents explicit excerpts of misogynistic and racist content. We decided not to censor them because we understood it is important to exemplify how violent the online debate is, how political violence against women is spread on social media, how we can identify gender political violence and what terms are frequently used against candidates. 

In only two days, the presidential candidates Simone Tebet (MDB) and Soraya Thronicke (União Brasil) were targeted by 6.661 thousand offenses on Twitter. Expressions as “you’re a shame” appeared on 1.050 tweets, according to a survey carried out by MonitorA, a project developed by AzMina, InternetLab and Núcleo Jornalismo.

The project analyzed almost 10 thousand tweets mentioning the candidates on August 28 and 29. On Sunday, 28, the first presidential debate was broadcast, promoted by a pool of media outlets composed by Band, TV Cultura, UOL and Folha de São Paulo. The results show that the attacks to both candidates present differences in relation to other candidates monitored by the project.  

After the debate, the narrative of shaming or intimidating women candidates repeats the expression used by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) against the journalist Vera Magalhães on Sunday evening. Two weeks later, on September 13, the same expression was employed by the deputy Douglas Garcia (Republicanos-SP) to harass Magalhães once again, after the debate among candidates to the Government of the State of São Paulo.

On Twitter, there were variations such as “what a shame you are to MT [State of Mato Grosso]”, “you are a shame to the Senate” and “you are a shame to women”, which belittle or depreciate the candidates. A part of the attacks questioning the senators’ representation use gender as grounds for authorizing criticism: “I’m a woman and you don’t represent me, you are a shame to women”.

Inspired by the president

You’re a shame

This is pure mimimi

Bolsonaro’s speeches targeting the journalist Vera Magalhães lead offenses

You’re in fact a shame to us righteous women!!! Go away, vulture, you’re a big liar, people had enough of such politicians!!! #BolsonaroReelected2022

Mimimimimi. When you’re attacking, it’s ok. When people answer, the shameful narrative begins… I was attacked for being a woman. Defend yourself with arguments, not with victimism. #ImawomanandImBolsonaro

She wants to become president, BUT she can’t take a strike on the debate without appealing to this feminist mimimi. Thank God nobody cares about her candidacy.

DISGUSTING, what a Shame to Brazilian women is it having a little person like you running for public office! President Bolsonaro is the only one among this bunch of bums who is really defending the Brazilian people! What a shame, what a disgusting woman you are! #BolsonaroatBand

Kinds of offenses to candidates

Mimimi/Victimism

You’re a shame

You’re a shame to women

Hostile tone

Traitor/Betrayer

Ridiculous/Pathetic

Weak/Loser

Incompetent/Underprepared

Hypocrite

Crazy/Mad/Wako

Appealing to shame is not news within misogynistic discourses, according to Saraj Sobieraj, president of the Sociology Department at Tufts University, in the United States, and Associate Professor at Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, at Harvard. On a paper published in 2017, based on 40 in-depth interviews with women with digital presence, she identified shaming as one of the three main forms of materialization of online gender violence, along with discrediting and harassment – especially with sexual content. The study states: “Attempts of public humiliation regularly explore double patterns of sexual behavior and physical appearance of women to smear the targets”.   

While harassment explores fear of sexual and physical violence, discrediting is present on sexist stereotypes, undervaluing women’s ideas and contributions. “She is often described as incapable of having an impartial opinion or perspective, because she is a bitch, an idiot, too emotional, she needs to fuck, she’s a dumb blonde, a prostitute or she has PMS, to give a few examples”, Sobieraj adds. 

On the case of Brazilian elections, discrediting is present on over 500 tweets, which refer to the candidates as incompetent, underprepared, incapable, insignificant, opportunistic, bloodsucker, stupid or idiot. It also consists of labeling as “victimists” those candidates who speak of feminism and gender equity and who oppose gender violence.

Almost a thousand tweets (993) use the terms mimimi, victimism or drama queen to offend or delegitimize candidates, who are frequently compared to women that have challenged feminine stereotypes on politics – Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, for example. Not even the former president Dilma Rousseff (PT), who used to be targeted by the same kind of attack, escapes from being quoted as a “drama-free” person: “with Dilma, at least, there wasn’t any mimimi”.

Chain reaction

Misogynistic offenses coming mainly from Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters repeat the group’s specific rhetoric. A considerable part of the tweets attacking candidates also makes reference to journalists: on 31% of the offensive posts, the journalist Vera Magalhães is mentioned, and a part of them also criticizes other professionals, as Míriam Leitão and Eliane Cantanhêde, who have posted tweets supporting the journalist. Magalhães was aimed by attacks containing derogatory adjectives and wordplay on at least 215 tweets. 

Besides that, some posts are repeated, with the same text and a few spelling or emoji alterations, indicating the existence of a coordinated action to intimidate and embarrass the candidates.

Frequently, users also question the actions taken by both senators on the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee about Covid-19. They are accused of omission regarding supposedly misogynistic attacks to two women heard by the investigation: the Doctors Nise Yamaguchi and Mayra Pinheiro, the latter now running for Federal Deputy in the State of Ceará.

The relation to other presidential candidates also helps to understand the background of the attacks. Out of 2.390 tweets mentioning other candidates, 55% quote Jair Bolsonaro textually or through hashtags, indicating that verbal aggressions to candidates can also be a form of electoral activism. 

The former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is mentioned on 303 tweets, often offensively, with the use of nicknames and hashtags as #lulathief, which are recurrent on digital actions by Bolsonaro’s supporters.

Beyond candidates

2,390 tweets mention other candidates

55% are about Jair Bolsonaro

You are a shame. Don’t say you’re Christian. You’re far from a woman of virtue. Ask to quit, you’re embarrassing yourself. #Bolsonaroonfirstround

You’re so pathetic your game is already exposed, and incompetent, of course. Shame to MS and Brazil. #ImawomanImBolsonaro

3,114 offensive tweets also mention Vera Magalhães

The journalist is directly offended on 215 tweets

That’s why she’s doing poorly on pools, get out of your bubble and face real life. This Vera person is a viper.

I sympathize with President Bolsonaro, the only one that didn’t plot before the debate and still ended up crushing everybody! The pseudo-journalist @veramagalhaes should be ashamed of the ridiculous role she played 

Attacks in a row

Along the two days of interactions analyzed by MonitorA, there were 63.863 tweets mentioning the profiles of the candidates Simone Tebet and Soraya Thronicke. Among them, 9.952 have potentially offensive words (see the methodology at the end of this article) and were individually analyzed by a team of journalists and researchers.

In an election in which the feminine vote is decisive and is being chased by all candidates running for office, gender is both a central agenda and a tool for discrediting and criticizing the few women on the pledge.

Over 35,7% of the identified offenses are misogynistic, and 30,3% of them use terms as ridiculous, pathetic, liar, hypocrite, two-faced, crook, immoral, shameless, bloodsucker, idiot and imbecile. 

There are recurrent attempts of disqualification, intellectual discrediting and moral offenses, besides tweets demonstrating “disgust” or dehumanizing the candidates. On this case, the most frequent words are “dork” and “jaguar”.

Two days, thousands offenses

9,952 tweets mention Tebet and Thronicke

52,7% attack or insult the candidates

1,125 tweets contain more than one offense/insult

Simone Tebet

6,651 mentions

4,093 insults/offenses

Soraya Thronicke

3,301 mentions

2,564 insults/offenses

Kinds of offenses by candidate

Misogyny

Insult

Belittlement

Moral offense

Intellectual discrediting

Disgust

Dehumanization

Ableism/Psychophobia

Political ideology

Ageism

Sexual harassment/offense

Religious ideology

Fatphobia 

Regarding Soraya Thronicke, 10,67% (278) of the mentions use the words “traitor” or “betrayer”. The candidate supported Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, and now competes with him for the presidency. Other 171 tweets question her competence or preparation for office, while 161 use words as “weak” or “loser”. 

Regarding Simone Tebet, a significant number of tweets (273) presents hostile or violent speech, although specific terms were not employed. There are 169 posts calling her “underprepared” or “not qualified”, while 113 posts include the words “weak” or “loser”. 

Differently from what MonitorA observed in the first week of campaign when attacks to almost a hundred candidates were analyzed, references to the politicians as crazy or mad were less frequent in this phase. Psychophobia and ableism, ageism and political ideology corresponded to over 2% of the posts. 

“We used the category “psychophobia and/or ableism” to classify comments that label candidates as persons with psychological syndromes or psychic problems, as well as comments about physical or intellectual disabilities. Suggestions or explicit mentions to candidates picturing them as “sick”, “borderline”, “bipolar” and “cripple” are common. At times, Simone and Soraya are called “old”, as if age could qualify women’s political action. Finally, attacks to the candidates’ political ideology depict them as unworthy of occupying the public scenario due to their political beliefs. The fact that the candidates have debated directly with other candidates can explain the smaller number of this kind of offense in this research phase”, explains Fernanda Martins, anthropologist, director at InternetLab and one of the study’s heads of research.

Gender as grounds for attacks

In accordance with the misogynistic pattern identified by the analysis, people belonging to minorized groups are frequently attacked because of their identities, which are an undesired presence in positions of power, according to Professor Sarah Sobieraj. This resource appears in a series of tweets that use terms as muié (a misspelling of mulher, meaning woman), little woman or woman between quotes, in a derogatory manner.  

To the researcher, “identity is so prominent on the abuse that attacks are almost interchangeable among women of similar origins. There is so little engagement on women’s ideas and proposals that, many times, you can hardly tell who the aggressor is talking about, unless you check it”.

Gender political violence is dangerous because it hinders women from engaging in politics. “They [the attacks] create a chilling effect. If you’re a young woman considering a carrier in politics, in activism and even in journalism, these jobs increasingly seem to be high-risk ones, which you should probably avoid. That undermines us all – not only the ones attacked”, the researcher explains.

Thus, an atmosphere is built in which candidates must defend themselves and create strategies to deal with the attacks, instead of doing the job they intended. This has been happening to journalists covering politics, to women acting on institutional politics and to women candidates. In an interview to the podcast Café da Manhã, produced by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, Vera Magalhães stated that she is continuously escorted by a professional bodyguard. 

Through her press officer, Simone Tebet affirmed that the campaign has been receiving online aggressions and “has been carefully dealing with them”. “To insure the campaign’s digital security, a specialized team is on watch day and night. When we detect an aggression or a piece of fake news, we immediately forward it to the Superior Electoral Court portal. We have been able to tear down many fake profiles and violent posts that attempted to attack me as a woman and as a politician”.

Soraya Thronicke affirms the offenses have aggravated in this period of electoral campaign, and that a large part of them are personal attacks that put her character at stake. According to Thronicke, the standard procedure is to block profiles of aggressors. “Depending on the content, the tweet is forwarded to the legal team to verify the need of a judicial measure, or even to the Federal Police security team for risk assessment and further action”, informed the note sent by Thronicke’s press officer.

The next debate between presidential candidates will be broadcast by CNN Brasil and SBT this Saturday (24), at 6:30PM. The broadcasters are part of a media pool that also comprises Veja magazine, the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, Nova Brasil FM and portal Terra.

To follow MonitorA’s surveys, access the project’s page or follow InternetLab on social media.

Methodology 

MonitorA 2022 follows 200 profiles of candidates – 175 women and 25 men – on Twitter. On August 28 and 29, a filter directed to the candidates Simone Tebet and Soraya Thronicke found 63.863 tweets (38.633 mentions to Simone Tebet and 25.230 to Soraya Thronicke), of which 12.137 presented potentially offensive words, previously listed on a lexicon composed of offensive, misogynistic, sexist, racist, lesbo, trans and homophobic terms. The worksheet went through a cleansing process to delete repetitions, and resulted in 9.952 tweets, later analyzed individually to identify whether they were indeed attacks or insults to the candidates, according to their context. The percentages presented on the article refer to these 9,9 thousand tweets that went through qualitative analysis. For further information about distinguishing attacks from insults, click here.

Reference:

Sarah Sobieraj (2017): Bitch, slut, skank, cunt: patterned resistance to women’s visibility in digital publics, Information, Communication & Society, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1348535.