Brazil: Lula’s Crude Remark Was Indefensible
By Hotspotnews
There is no charitable reading of what President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in Belém. He was not delivering a careful public-health message. He was speaking like a man who has grown sloppy with power and tone-deaf to basic decency.
Lula told a crowd that Brazilian men are “cowards” who refuse the prostate exam because they dislike “the touch.” Then he added the line that cannot be walked back: women “learn to take the touch from when they are little.” He offered that comparison as if it were common sense. It is not.
A sitting president does not casually describe young girls as people who get accustomed to intimate medical touching. That language is crude. It is sexual in implication even if he claims he only meant gynecological checkups. It is unprofessional coming from the highest office in the country. Adults understand the difference between a routine adult screening and the image of small children being “taught” to accept digital examination of their bodies. Pretending those two things occupy the same moral category is either lazy or worse.
Medical guidelines do not treat little girls as patients who routinely undergo internal exams. Pediatric care is supposed to be conservative and protective. A leader who speaks as if early intimate touching is simply part of female life has revealed how far he sits from ordinary parental instinct. That is not a “gotcha.” It is the plain meaning of the words he chose.
The campaign’s rush to the TSE to scrub posts criticizing the remark only confirms the problem. When a politician’s own phrasing produces widespread disgust, the mature response is to own the sloppiness and apologize. Trying to silence the reaction treats voters as children who cannot be trusted with the unfiltered record.
Lula has spent decades in public life. He should know that certain images should never leave a president’s mouth. This one did. It was rude. It was sexually charged. It was beneath the office. No amount of later explanation changes the sentence he actually delivered.