BELÉM, BRAZIL — A campaign moment about prostate cancer screening quickly turned into one of the most talked-about clips of Brazil’s election season, after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told a crowd in Belém that men are “cowards” for avoiding the exam — and drew a pointed comparison to how women are conditioned to accept similar medical procedures from a young age.

While speaking at a campaign rally in Belém, Pará, on September 28, just days before the nation’s all-important presidential election, Lula didn’t hold back.

“The man is a coward. The man doesn’t like prostate tests. He doesn’t like the touch,” he told the crowd, using the Portuguese word “toque” — the digital rectal exam widely associated with prostate screening in Brazil. He went further, framing the discomfort men feel as something women are simply taught to accept far earlier in life: “Women learn to take a finger from when they are little... men don’t, they don’t know that when they have prostate cancer, they’ll get a lot of finger in them.”

The remarks were part of a broader pitch on regional healthcare access — Lula used the moment to highlight a newly available robotic prostate surgery option in Pará and the North region, arguing that the technology eliminates common fears around the procedure, including complications like incontinence and sexual dysfunction that have historically kept men away from both screening and treatment.

The remarks weren’t a slip — Lula has made nearly identical comments before, including during a 2023 “Conversa com o Presidente” broadcast as part of Brazil’s Novembro Azul (Blue November) men’s health awareness campaign, where he made a similar comparison between the male “toque” exam and women’s routine gynecological care.

What turned Monday’s version into a viral moment, however, was the setting: a live campaign rally, just days before the first round of voting on October 4, with cameras rolling and the crowd’s reaction feeding directly into social media clips within hours.

The irony is the perceived downplaying of similar comments by Lula’s own left-leaning feminist and women’s rights groups, who have gained significant political weight in recent years, driven largely by a documented surge in violence against women rather than shifting ideology alone.

Beneath the disturbing comments sits a real public health statistic: in Brazil one man dies from prostate cancer roughly every 40 minutes, and about 20% of cases are diagnosed only after reaching advanced stages — largely because men delay or skip the screening exam.

Health officials have long pointed to stigma and discomfort around the digital rectal exam as a leading reason men avoid early detection. But the stigma is not exclusive to Brazil.

The Politics of It

Whether the moment helps or hurts Lula politically is an open question. Blunt, informal remarks have long been part of his public persona, and supporters are likely to see this as vintage Lula — direct, a little crude, but in service of a real public health message.

Critics, meanwhile, may seize on the framing as tone-deaf or reductive, particularly given how it draws a direct — and somewhat uncomfortable — comparison between two very different categories of medical exams.

Either way, with the first round of voting just days away, the clip’s rapid spread guarantees it becomes part of the closing-week conversation around Lula’s campaign, for better or worse.