Online verbal attacks on women in power. A Brazilian case study

Abstract

This chapter draws on models of linguistic impoliteness to examine how online verbal attacks relate to the discursive conditions of democracy. Building on the theoretical framework presented in Chapter 1 and the methodological approach detailed in Chapter 2, this chapter presents the findings of a multi-case study centered on Congresswomen Sâmia Bomfim and Erika Hilton and Supreme Federal Court (STF) Judge Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha. These women have been recurrent targets of social media hostility, including insults and insinuations often focused on their physical appearance and gender identity. The analysis addresses a common research question across all cases: how do online verbal attacks on women and LGBT+ public figures shape the democratic and human rights environment in Brazil? We hypothesize that such attacks contribute to the discursive erosion of democracy, which thereby undermines equality, dignity, and individuals’ capacity to participate on equal footing in public debate. Our findings show that linguistic impoliteness is primarily enacted through insults, sarcasm, and playful provocation, intensified by the affordances of digital platforms. These patterns reflect discursive dynamics associated with misogyny, sexism, and transphobia. The analysis also highlights the role of challenging questions in generating conflictual interactions that provoke, threaten, and degrade perceived opponents, and in reinforcing “us versus them” dynamics that fuel polarization. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that hostile discourse targeting these public figures contributes to the erosion of deliberative norms, the undermining of individual rights, and the weakening of democratic discourse by narrowing conditions of inclusion and recognition, distorting deliberative equality, and compromising equality, dignity, and the right to gender expression.