A woman is dragged along the Tietê seafront and loses both legs. A woman is hanged in the street in São Paulo. The same weekend, a woman was stabbed to death by her ex-partner in Diadema and another in Santo André. It is partly the ease of filming attacks against women that makes them come to us more frequently. But there are also signs that the number of attacks is increasing.
In the case of crimes such as rape and domestic violence, a large proportion of crimes are never recorded. Therefore, we never know whether an increase in official figures means more crimes were committed or whether it is simply an increase in the number of reports. Violent deaths are all recorded. An increase in the number of feminicides effectively indicates that violence against women is indeed increasing. And that’s what we saw. In São Paulo, the number of feminicides at the end of October already exceeded the total for 2024. In the country, 9,988 cases were recorded in October, compared to 10,217 for the whole of 2024. Will we get there?
This is consistent with evidence from other countries. In the UK, violence against women increased by 37% between 2018 and 2023. In several countries, reports of women leaving the political scene due to harassment, threats and violence have become more common – such as that of Anna-Karin Hatt, who left the leadership of the Center Party in Sweden.
The sentence for feminicide is 40 years, a very heavy sentence. It will take something more than criminal law to reverse this trend. More structure to accommodate women who must leave violent homes and ensure compliance with protection measures. And we can go beyond.
The increase in violence against women does not necessarily have ideological causes. Economic and mental health factors may be behind this worsening. But there is no denying that deeply misogynistic ideologies have spread online. They have to have some social effect, and that’s not good. One of the recent cases of assault even came from Thiago Schutz, known as “Red Pill”, an influencer who claims to reveal the “truth” about relationships between men and women.
Among the different variations and movements – masculinist, machosphere, red pill – they all have in common a view of women as an inferior type of human being. They would be self-interested by nature, concerned only with securing rich and powerful men. Accusations of rape are false, female fidelity is deceptive; she is always looking for a more valuable man. The only way to deal with it is to act like an “alpha man”: strong, dominant, without ever showing weakness. And woe to those who make the mistake of rejecting it, thus revealing its low value…
Among adolescents – I am the father of two children – the terms and categories of this subculture are part of daily discourse, even among those who do not follow the ideology at all: the alpha, the beta and the sigma, the “red pill” which would open our eyes. Young people must be taught that the greater role and increased autonomy of women does not demean them. No one owns another person’s body and can demand affection or sex. Readjusting masculinity to a world of equality, without losing its virtues, is an urgent task.
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