'A Case Of Transphobia': Crybullies Campaign Against The Rights Of Women In Brazil

A documentary on the derangements of gender identity

In 2025, Brazilian feminist activist and graphic designer Isabella Cêpa received political asylum in Europe because she faced years in prison for online comments that offended transgender politician Érika Hilton. Cêpa became the world’s first gender critical political refugee and an embarrassment to Brazil, which had proudly overcome its authoritarian past.

Cêpa was officially charged with “racism” for “misgendering” Hilton, a representative of Brazil’s wokest political party, the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL). Like abusive men worldwide who use gender identity as grounds for legal harassment, Hilton was riding a wave of well-meaning legislation and court rulings from a self-satisfied political class.

In 2019, the Brazilian judiciary reinterpreted homophobia and transphobia as forms of racism under the country’s 1989 Lei do Racismo. Then, in 2023, the court criminalized slurs against gays and trans individuals, with some prosecutors also deeming misgendering to be a slur. Fearing prosecution on these grounds, publications thereafter referred to trans Brazilians by their preferred pronouns.

The same Brazilian supreme court (STF) ruled in Cêpa’s favor in September 2025, dismissing the case against her in what was seen as a landmark victory for free speech. However, at least one woman that Cêpa retweeted still faces trial in Paraíba for what she posted on X. She is not the only woman in Brazil now being criminalized for calling a man a man. It is becoming far too common, anymore, despite the STF ruling.

Cêpa’s story is told in the new documentary, On Whose Behalf? Women and Gender Policy in Brazil. Created by MATRIA, the Associação de Mulheres, Mães e Trabalhadoras do Brasil (Association of Women, Mothers and Workers of Brazil), it is a comprehensive reveal on the crybully campaign against women’s rights in that country.

Karen Mizuno, who was investigated for making a joke about archaeologists determining sex from bone structure, is another example of a woman’s human right to speak being crushed by the Brazilian state. Isadora Borges, a veterinary student, has also been charged criminally for 2020 social media posts stating that transwomen are male — again, at the behest of Érika Hilton.

Last week, Bianca Barreto was sentenced to two years of house arrest for using male pronouns in reference to transgender politician Duda Salabert. What these cases all have in common is that they involve crybully men punishing women for saying words that make those men feel bad. They are exactly like regular abusive men who hate women, but they wear lipstick.

On Whose Behalf? contains the familiar litany of abuses. Men use their putative gender identities to barge their way into women’s sports and spaces. Male prisoners identify their way into women’s prisons. Men identify as women to commit men’s crimes and get counted as women in statistics. Transgender advocacy has a disturbing focus on children and restroom access. Detransitioners are treated as pariahs, their existence denied.

Because their building was planned without women in mind at all, the Brazilian Senate only constructed a women’s restroom inside the plenary chamber a decade ago, after 55 years. Aside from this notable example of the local conditions, the rest of the documentary feels very familiar — because it is all so very familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the impositions and demands of ‘gender identity’ for the last decade.

Well-meaning Brazilian politicians and judges have provided tools that transgender identity politicians have weaponized against women. Silencing and punishing women is a feature of their agenda, not a bug. For it is only by crushing the dissent of women that these men can impose themselves on every woman in Brazil, wherever they want, in every way they want.