In my last column (), I addressed the case of , in Copacabana, in . I discussed the formation of a type of masculine identity that can relativize violence against women. This led me to look for the Brazilian law that criminalizes women. To my surprise, and as confirmed by , former president of OAB/SP, it does not exist.
A is low in several countries, including here, in the green-yellow lands. This low representation is also reflected in legislation, generating imbalances when observing the gap between women’s basic rights and the creation of new laws.
We can include in this hall the delay in the approval of in Brazil (1977), the creation of the law that criminalizes () and (2015). There seems to be a veil of invisibility that falls over half the population.
Discriminatory speeches and attitudes against women proliferate in different sectors of society, often influencing young people, who absorb this misogynistic content, which can lead them to develop a masculine identity based on this speech.
According to the article “How do we study misogyny in the digital age? A systematic literature review using a computational linguistic approach”, published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications in 2024, it is a word of Greek origin that means hatred of women and manifests itself in practices ranging from physical and sexual violence, from exclusion to contempt and marginalization, in addition to expressions of male dominance and objectification of women.
Thus, what we often observe is that (patriarchal) society produces and reproduces gender inequalities in which traditional gender role stereotypes are exalted, while new ways of belittling women emerge, mainly on the internet. The law needs to protect women in the same way it protects other groups in society.
In Brazil, the Law (law 1,390), of 1951, was the first attempt to create anti-discrimination legislation and to classify the criminal offense of discrimination based on race or color. In 1985, sex and marital status were included. Criminalization only occurred in 1989, with law 7,716. In 1997, religion, ethnicity and national origin were included in the law. In 2019, he equated it with discrimination by and with racism. The criminalization of misogyny was lost in this debate, which often reflects what happens to women: their invisibility.
On social media, hate groups proliferate, co-opting young people who “buy” this ideology and start treating women as a hostile group. These misogynistic groups extol traditional gender norms and stereotypes as positive, while advocating overtly misogynistic expressions, which represent the most extreme manifestation of aggression against women. Some content even teaches how to attack women.
It is high time for the political system to include misogyny in the list of crimes equivalent to racism. The law is necessary to combat this growing hate speech against women simply for being women.
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