Use of hate speech targeting trans people has been an effective tool in politics
In July of 2022, Kim Flores was denied a waxing service in São Paulo for being a trans woman. Despite having scheduled an appointment, when Flores arrived at the salon, she was informed that the establishment only provided waxing services for “biological women.” Flores, who works as a graphic designer and makes video content on TikTok and Instagram, took to the internet to tell her story. She left the salon a review on Google where she described what happened and posted videos about the situation for her 10,000 followers.
In the next few days, the videos and the review posted by Flores were used to defame her and create a moral panic about trans women in cisgender women’s spaces by right-wing politicians and writers. Then-municipal councilor Nikolas Ferreira in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state, reposted Flores’s video on Instagram, adding his own comments about how Flores was actually a man.
“It’s very convenient for [Ferreira] to continue disseminating hate speech against trans people and trans activism because they purport to be protecting women and children,” Flores told Global Voices in a phone interview. “As if trans people are a threat to women and children. Trans people are used as scapegoats.”
Ferreira, currently a 29-year-old Congressman, is well-known in Brazilian politics for using social media virality to gain visibility from the electorate. According to a study published in January by Zeeng, a company that researches online marketing strategies, he is Brazil’s most influential politician, with an average of 1,591,156 interactions per post. Currently, Ferreira is the second most followed politician in Brazil, with 22 million followers on Instagram.
In the last decade in Brazil, transphobia has become the main tool for disseminating misinformation, according to Caê Vatiero, a trans journalist and media researcher. “It’s a strategy of using a scapegoat to gain voters,” Vatiero told Global Voices. “Trans people are being turned into a moral panic so right-wing politicians can say, this is what we are fighting against.”
The strategy works. A few months after launching his attacks on Flores, Ferreira was elected for chamber of deputies at the National Congress, as a Minas Gerais’ representative, with 1.47 million votes, the highest voting in the country in 2022. Much like his ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro, Ferreira owes his online virality to hate speech that matches pre-existing prejudices in Brazilian society, according to Caia Maria, trans activist and director of programs at Intersexo Brasil.
“The right-wing camp does not elect itself by fooling the electorate,” she told Global Voices over a phone interview, diagnosing Ferreira’s tactics as a feedback loop of pre-existing prejudices. “It merges with the desire of these voters to return to a society that has exterminated trans people from public life. [They want to] return to a time when trans women were afraid to go to the supermarket, to carry out the most mundane activities of their daily lives. Because that was the case until the end of the 20th century.”
In addition to Ferreira’s video, Flores was also defamed by right-wing influencer Gustavo Lázaro, by state deputy of Minas Gerais Eduardo Azevedo, and trans-exclusionary feminist writer Andrea Nobre. Flores sued all of her detractors for libel and defamation, while Ferreira was specifically sued for “transphobia, hate speech, and an affront to human dignity,” according to court documents reviewed by Global Voices. In November of 2025, Flores won her case against Ferreira, who was sentenced to pay R$40,000 (US$7,613) in damages to Flores.
After losing the case, Ferreira shared on X, formerly Twitter, that it was now “a crime to call a man a man” and that he was “being punished for speaking the truth,” a post that received 1.3 million views. “He ends up becoming a martyr,” Flores said.
But Flores doesn’t see her own victory as a deterrent for anybody who uses transphobic hate to gain an internet following or votes. it’s a type of marketing. It’s cheaper than a [political] campaign to pay R$40,000 because, at the end of the day, he will promote himself as being ‘against the system’, someone who wants to defend free speech, the traditional family.”
As a result, trans people are affected by this hate speech in their day-to-day lives. “It affects all social aspects. Trans people aren’t able to rent a place to live, for example. We are being pushed further to the margins.”
Global Voices reached out to Ferreira to ask about his use of transphobia online as a tactic for social media engagement but did not receive a response before publication.
Democracy and Transphobia
There are limited studies on the use of transphobia as a tactic to gain visibility and virality online in Brazil, but Maria identifies the public rejection of any LGBTQI+ lifestyle as an old tactic to appeal to the population at large. Citing the first pro-dictatorship march in 1964 before Brazil’s military took over the country for 21 years, a protest “March of the Family with God for Liberty” Maria argues that public discrimination performed for the masses are usually followed by attacks on democracy.
“These marches represented a call for support for very harmful and violent policies. This continues to be the right-wing position, as was seen [during attempted coup in Brasilia on] January 8th 2023.”
For Caio Tedesco, a trans historian at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), there is a clear cycle of progress for trans rights that is met with backlash from conservative camps. “The extreme right camp uses our issues to persecute and return [to the issue of trans people], there’s always a very strong backlash to whatever little progress we achieve,” he said. “So it’s always two steps forward, three steps back.”
Despite this historical origin, the internet allows for much faster dissemination of hate speech. “It’s important to talk about how the structures of Big Tech are built on racism and transphobia,” Vatiero said. “Their economic structure makes it easy for people to make money through the dissemination of transphobia. And today, people understand that it is extremely lucrative.”
Backlash to Trans Women in Politics
Despite aggressive opposition, the 2022 elections were a watershed moment for trans women in politics. According to the National Association of Travestis and Transexuals, there were 79 trans candidates in 2022, a rise of 49% since the last national election in 2018, when extreme-right Jair Bolsonaro was elected. Overall, four trans women were elected in 2022: Erika Hilton and Duda Salabert were elected to the federal chamber of deputies and Linda Brasil in the state of Sergipe and Dani Balbi in Rio de Janeiro were elected to their respective states’ chambers of deputies.
City councilwoman Natasha Ferreira, elected in Porto Alegre in 2024, describes this rise in trans candidacies as a re-organization of the LGBTQI+ movement to “dispute spaces and sectors where we previously could not dispute” in response Bolsonaro’s right-wing and openly anti-LGBTQI+ political agenda.
Hilton and Salabert were the first ever trans women to be elected into Brazilian congress—but this victory didn’t happen without pushback. Research by Vatiero and Victória Ribeiro Carvalho at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) identified a pattern of transphobic attacks against both candidates in the run-up of the 2022 elections. Between August and November of 2022, Vatiero and Carvalho found 665 transphobic posts directed at two politiciansThe posts questioned their gender or used masculine pronouns to refer to them.
Despite being elected, the attacks on social media against Salabert and Hilton have continued throughout their terms, In September of 2025, Hilton was accused of paying for a make-up artist with public money. Councilwoman Natasha was a victim of similar accusations in June of 2025, when she travelled from Porto Alegre to São Paulo to attend that year’s Pride.
“I really feel that they are strategic, because it wasn’t about being a trans person or participating in Pride—it was about public spending,” Natasha told Global Voices in a phone interview, adding that any event she attends that is not viewed well by conservatives is framed in this way. “In other words, she’s spending our money to party.”
Natasha counters these attacks with an agenda she describes as “transparent,” “for human rights, with an emphasis on LGBTQI+ populations,” and “guided by feminism as a tool for emancipation of the people.” The councilwoman believes her broad approach to human rights helps her combat or avoid harassment.
“During my term, I chose not to be pigeonholed or reduced to the issues of the LGBT community,” Natasha said. “Because I believe that we, as LGBTQI+ people, take the bus, pay rent, go to the market. The political stance I’m taking is a broader one: it’s about sitting at the decision-making table, and saying, look, my community isn’t represented here, and I don’t want to be in an LGBTQI+ [exclusive] table because I am not segregated from the rest of my city.”