A network of Brazilian influencers is attacking women's suffrage and the right of women to go to the polls. That is the finding of a three-month investigation by BBC News Brasil, reported by Shin Suzuki, published on Monday (14) and also carried by Folha de S.Paulo, one of Brazil's leading newspapers. The attacks drew national attention in June, when Paulo Figueiredo, an influencer linked to the Bolsonaro family, criticized "the quality" of women's votes.
The statement is far from isolated, the report says. Social media carries entire shows and podcast clips that gather thousands of likes and comments with phrases such as "women's suffrage is the mistake of Western democracy". Other clips blame women's voting for society's problems and for the hardships of modern men's lives. The BBC mapped an ecosystem that also includes women: Fernanda Guardian says she would give up her own right to vote, and influencer Pietra Bertolazzi has attacked women's suffrage. Speech that once seemed confined to internet niches now echoes in Brazil's political debate and in conservative circles in the United States, in a general election year.
From the manosphere to podcasts
Many of these influencers belong to the so-called manosphere and to redpill culture, communities that praise a strong, dominant man who stays permanently alert to a woman's intentions, the report describes. A central figure is Renato Amoedo, known as Renato 38ao, a nickname that refers to a revolver caliber. He had more than 900,000 Instagram followers in August. The profile is no longer available, and he says the account was taken down.
In a post this year, Amoedo used crude terms to attack the votes of unmarried women. It drew more than 20,000 likes and nearly 500 comments, most of them supportive, according to the BBC. He argues that study and work should not be a woman's life focus, and said on a podcast that women's suffrage, established by decree in Brazil in 1932, was the origin of the modern welfare state. "For a woman to make work and study the priority of her life is spiritual, physical and financial self-destruction," he said. "They are cheap because they are poor." In 2022, asked about the legality of a hypothetical union between a 50-year-old man and an eight-year-old child, he replied: "If the parents agree and everyone agrees...". The BBC contacted Amoedo repeatedly; he declined an interview, and an aide said he was traveling through Monaco and Portugal. He is a regular guest on Redcast, a podcast created for the manosphere audience, with slightly more than one million YouTube subscribers.
"The Constitution would have to be torn up"
The BBC showed some of the videos to Justice Carmen Lucia of the STF, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court and its only female member today. "This is democracy, people being able to say even this," she said.
"If they did not have the vote, they would not have the freedom to express what we want, including being against it. That is what democracy guarantees, something a dictatorship does not guarantee."
In Carmen Lucia's view, the mere proposal of changing voting rights in Brazil, which are universal today, is unconstitutional. To end women's suffrage, she said, "the Constitution would have to be torn up". The full findings appear in the report and in the documentary "O Ataque ao Voto Feminino" (The Attack on Women's Vote), on BBC News Brasil's YouTube channel. The first round of Brazil's presidential election takes place in October.