Brazilian congressman forced to pay restitution over misgendering a trans woman

Freedom of speech doesn’t trump anti-discrimination law in Brazil, so the politician must pay his victim 40,000 Brazilian Reais.

By Roberta Rocinante

Congressman Nikolas Ferreira (PL) has been declared guilty over the charges of slander against a trans woman after calling her a man over Tik-Tok in September 2022. Now he has to pay forty thousand Reais in restitution.The case happened after the victim went on Tik-Tok to complain over a beauty salon refusing to give her service due to a policy of only allowing “biological women”. 

This is an unlawful behavior under the Brazilian discrimination law, but so far nothing has come out of this in terms of legal enforcement.

The social media post however made some waves inside Tik-Tok which took the attention of the Congressman who did a stitch of the video where he said “She considers herself a woman, but she is a man”. 

Once again, this falls under Brazilian discrimination law, which allowed for the Congressman to be sued.

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In his defence Congressman Nikolas Ferreira has said that his actions fall under freedom of speech and that he was just commenting on the fabricated debate over “gender ideology” – an idea that right wing politicians in Brazil copied from the right in the USA, in their ongoing attempts to delegitimize the country – the Congressman also denied having done anything illegal.

Now this isn’t new from Nikolas Ferreira, an auto (self) declared Bolsonarista – a person that sides with the former President and now ineligible politician Jair Bolsonaro and his family – who denied the existence of COVID-19 and that the pandemic was fake, has spread fake news through his career and has ties to organized crime among other things.

But this is the first time he has been found guilty in the eyes of the law, now owing forty thousand Reais to his victim.

In his declaration over the sentence Judge André Augusto Salvador Bezzera said that “a public person shouldn’t reinforce discriminatory practices and that by doing so the Congressman only increased the social damage those can inflict”.

Now a note on freedom of speech in Brazil– Brazil, much like the USA in theory, has both freedom of speech and freedom of press. 

A Brazilian person can express any ideas they want, any. However, Brazil has laws against discrimination meaning that while you as a person can express racist, transphobic, homophobic and xenophobic ideas as much as you want you are still committing a crime and inflicting violence over the people you are talking about. 

These laws exist because to have a proper democracy all people must feel welcomed and a part of society, which can’t happen if you allow prejudice to fester.

Brazil is far from a perfect country, it is one of the countries that kills the most trans people in the world, and it has a deep history with racism and discrimination, but steps are being taken so we move on as a society.

Congressman Nikolas Ferreira is in the position to have known that, but you can’t expect anything from his ilk, much less a proper discussion.