A Brazilian influencer has been handed a two-year prison sentence after using male pronouns to refer to a transgender politician. Bianca Barreto received her sentence from the 9th Criminal Court of Salvador on July 29, after she was found guilty of the “intentional and pejorative use of the gender opposite… [to a] self-declared identity.”
The sentence follows a lengthy case stemming from a 2024 video posted to social media by Barreto. In the video, she criticized Duda Salabert, a member of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies. Salabert is a member of the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party, and was one of the first openly trans-identified people to be elected to the Chamber, serving since 2022.
Barreto’s video described an earlier case involving Salabert and conservative parliamentarian Nikolas Ferreira. Ferreira, another member of the Chamber of Deputies, stood in the same election as Salabert in 2020 to be a local councillor for the city of Belo Horizonte. At the time, Salabert was the first trans-identified person to run for office to the city council.
In an interview during the campaign, Ferreira told a local newspaper that he will still refer to Salabert with male pronouns.
“He is a man. That’s what’s on his birth certificate, regardless of what he thinks,” he said, while in another interview saying he wasn’t worried about being sued by Salabert for his remarks. “It’s biology. I’m not saying something I think. He is a man. And it’s important to make it clear that there is no criminalization related to biology,” he added.
However, Salabert did file a criminal complaint against Ferreira, referencing the fact that Brazil’s Supreme Court had classified transphobia and homophobia as crimes of “social racism” since 2019. The case was later dismissed on procedural grounds, but in a separate civil action, Ferreira was forced to pay R$80,000 in 2023, equivalent to around $15,500 USD, reduced on appeal to R$30,000.
Barreto discussed the case against Ferreira in her video in 2024, telling her audience that they “must have already heard of Congressman Duda Salabert,” adding that “he’s a guy who says he’s a trans woman, but he’s married to a woman and has a son or daughter.” She continued, saying that whatever “she does in her private life is not my problem. Now, it will always be a problem when these people try to impose things on us that are not real, that are a product of her imagination. By ‘her’ I mean the person, because a man is a man, a woman is a woman, and that’s it.”
In a written summary displayed throughout the video, Barreto repeated how it was insane that someone was being sued “for calling a man a man.”
But her remarks on the case against Ferreira ultimately led to her own prosecution, and Salabert filed a criminal complaint against Barreto as well.
Barreto argued in court that her content was legitimate political discourse, and that as a Christian she had the right to advocate for candidates that share her values, but that she was neither encouraging violence against nor hating trans-identified individuals.
The judge disagreed, claiming that it is a form of “marginalization” to refer to trans-identified individuals with masculine pronouns. Citing the 2019 Supreme Court ruling, the judge argued that the recognition of self-declared gender identity is completely mandatory in Brazil, because it is an “inseparable element of personality rights and the dignity of the human person.” The judge added that “the deliberate use of biological sex at birth to ridicule and disqualify the social identity of a trans woman in a public arena is not merely an exercise of opinion; it is an act that refuses to recognize her citizenship.”
Barreto’s sentence will be served in the “open” system, which is similar to house arrest in that her movement will be restricted and she will be required to check in with a police officer or judge regularly. Barreto was also forced to pay damages of R$20,000, which is around $3,800 USD.
The conviction of Barreto follows another high-profile case in Brazil, that of women’s rights activist Isabella Cêpa, who was granted refugee status in Europe after facing the possibility of a prison sentence for referring to another trans-identified politician as a man. As Reduxx previously reported, Cêpa was facing five counts under the “social racism” statutes, which could have carried a sentence of 25 years, after describing candidate Felipe Santos Silva as a man in the 2020 São Paulo municipal elections.
Silva, who also goes by the name Erika Hilton, reported the women’s rights activist to the police, with European authorities in August of 2025 accepting that Cêpa had a well-founded fear of persecution on account of her political beliefs, granting her protection. Luckily for Cêpa, the complaint was forcibly dropped for good just one month later, after Justice Gilmar Mendes in Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that calling Hilton a “man” does not constitute a hate crime, and refused to re-open the criminal case after it had been previously dismissed.
Ironically, Silva, who was elected along with Salabert to the Chamber of Deputies in 2022 as the other trans-identified candidate, was promoted to the president of the Women’s Rights Committee in March this year. He argued that the parliamentary committee must focus on women “without exception in their dignity and plurality,” even including transvestites in his definition.
In a statement, Barreto’s legal team said they would appeal the decision, as they believe it “does not correspond to the legal understanding of the defense regarding the facts and evidence contained in the case file,” and that therefore “all applicable appeal measures will be taken within the legal timeframe, with the aim of submitting the matter to the competent authorities for review.”
Barreto’s team further noted that they remain convinced that the case should be analyzed in light of the fundamental guarantees provided for in the Federal Constitution, especially the freedoms of expression, conscience, belief, and religious manifestation, the scope and application of which will be duly presented within the appropriate procedural framework.”
Speaking to Reduxx on Barreto’s case, Clarice Saadi of Brazilian women’s rights advocacy group MATRIA noted that the nation was struggling under a wave of trans activist censorship.
MATRIA has recently released a short documentary about the negative impacts of gender identity ideology on women and children in Brazil and in the world.
— MATRIA (Brasil) (@MATRIAoficial) July 30, 2026
Watch it on Youtube, with English subtitles.https://t.co/alUTJHOIMS
“Bianca Barreto’s conviction represents another step in a growing series of court decisions that are imposing on society—and especially on women—the obligation to refer to men as women under the threat of criminal sanctions, something that is only happening in Brazil,” Saadi says.
“Referring to someone as ‘sir’ or using masculine pronouns for a man is a basic rule of language and should not be treated as an offense. These are ordinary forms of address in Portuguese and refer to the objective perception of a person’s sex. If stating that a male person is a man can be treated as a crime, then the State is punishing people for describing reality,” she continued.
“The State should not require everyone to adopt a particular view of sex, gender identity, and language, nor should it turn the acknowledgment of reality into a criminal offense.”
