Illustration by Clarice Wenzel (Enlê Art)
This report focuses on tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) and misogynoir against Black Brazilian women. Based on research conducted by Instituto Minas Programam between April 2024 and March 2025, the findings expose some of the ways mainstream digital technologies are embedded with racism, sexism and misogynoir and show how Black Brazilian women have been carving out their/our own online spaces, building strategies for resistance, connection and possibility.
The decade preceding this publication was marked by a growing, robust presence of Black Brazilian women organising and writing online through blogs, social media pages, online groups and networks. A time marked by Black Brazilian women’s successful introduction of vocabularies to online publics, as well as dissemination of Black feminist thought to broader audiences and reaching Brazil’s cultural and political agenda.
Simultaneously, it was a decade marked by the occurrence of TFGBV and misogynoir against Black Brazilian women. Every so often, a few of these cases, especially when they involved well-known individuals, would come to light. This report seeks to illustrate something Black Brazilian women have been denouncing for years: how pervasive these phenomena are, whether we are thinking of well-known, public figures or anonymous, everyday women.
Our analysis of TFGBV against Black Brazilian women is informed by the recognition of various forms of TFGBV as expressions of systemic gender- based violence, linked to broader patterns of misogyny and violence against various gender diverse groups. When looking to the Brazilian context more specifically, this report positions TFGBV and misogynoir against Black Brazilian women as phenomena that are to be understood as a continuation of broader violent expressions of racism, sexism and ableism that are prevalent in Brazilian society.
In other words, in a country where Black women are the demographic group most impacted by gender-based violence, TFGBV also permeates the experiences of many Black women in Brazil. Let us turn to some existing research to exemplify this: Trindade’s work on the construction and dissemination of racist discourses on social networks reveals that Black women who have varying degrees of social mobility, aged 20 to 35, represent 81%
of victims of racist speech on social media in Brazil. Trindade proposes that hate speech against Black Brazilian women on social media platforms seeks to consolidate power structures in the country and that the posts, “jokes” and attacks targeting Black Brazilian women attempt at portraying Black women as the “other”, whether as “invaders”; as “delinquent” or criminals; or as “uncultured” – especially when Black Brazilian women access (or appear to be accessing) positions of relatively higher social status. Trindade argues the existence of Black Brazilian women who are socially ascending – and posting about it – destabilises the imaginary hierarchy maintained since colonial times and preferred by white supremacy logic in the country. The author concludes that these “transgressions’’ made by Black Brazilian women are met with what he defines as hate speech
via violent posts and tweets that reproduce misogynoir, carrying gendered and racially charged content and that “users who engage in this practice are playing the role of vectors for the transmission of deep-rooted and naturalised colonial racist ideologies, and thereby reinforcing their perpetuation in Brazilian society.” As we will see throughout this report, misogynoir and TFGBV are often used against Black Brazilian women who destabilise or disrupt Brazilian society’s expectations of them.
Over the past few years, research has shown that Black women account for 60% of the cases of racism and racial insults on social networks in Brazil. Research by Instituto Marielle Franco has found that 78% of Black Brazilian women running in municipal elections in 2020 had suffered some form of “virtual violence”, with both misogyny and racism being defining features of the attacks. Another study covering the 2020 elections reaches a similar conclusion, demonstrating how political violence in Brazil can be linked to racism, ageism and LGBT-phobia.
This work forms part of the third edition of the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) project, supported by the APC Women’s Rights Programme and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).