“From today onwards, I identify as a woman, so you can no longer prosecute me for hate speech against women”: digital influencers and technological-facilitated gender-based violence in Portugal

As a defining feature of Portugal’s social structure, machismo has long shaped its culture, making sexist and even misogynistic discourse commonplace. However, the technological affordances of digital platforms have amplified, as well as increased the frequency and severity of gender-based violence against women in public life. This rise in technological-facilitated gender-based violence may also be linked to the emergence and mainstreaming of the radical right-wing CHEGA party, the influence of digital personalities, transnational far-right and men’s rights movements online. The research presented in this paper focuses mainly on digital personalities in the manosphere – often called masculinity influencers or “manfluencers” – and their followers. Male supremacist influencers use inflammatory, sexist, and misogynistic rhetoric to target prominent (mostly left-wing) women, women in general, and especially feminists. These discourses generate high engagement, increase their visibility, and ultimately boost their monetisation opportunities (Gerrand et al, 2025). Manfluencers are also increasingly known for producing content embodying a neoliberal subjectivity grounded in patriarchal values and the pursuit of economic success. This is frequently demonstrated through ostentatious displays of wealth and financial advice (Baker et al., 2024). At the same time, more politically engaged influencers openly support or are affiliated with CHEGA or other right-wing and far-right movements, while others endorse broader neoliberal economic policies. In this study, we present a preliminary mapping of these individuals in the Portuguese context and the main themes of their content across mainstream platforms such as X, YouTube, and TikTok. Our methodology combines non-participant observation of social media users, along with critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Blommaert, 2005; Fairclough, 2013) and a feminist and phenomenological approach (Alcoff, 2000; Ahmed, 2004; Berggren, 2014).