Ten people have been on trial this week in Paris, accused of transphobic cyberbullying against Brigitte Macron. France’s first lady, the wife of Emmanuel Macron, pressed charges after a claim that she was in fact a man went global. Some of those in the dock have apologised for spreading the allegations online but others have said that it’s just a bit of harmless fun and that in a free country one should be able to say what one likes.
This argument was dismissed by Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, Jean Ennochi, who said: ‘They all talk to you about freedom of expression, defamation, they completely deny cyberbullying [and] mob harassment.’ Prosecutors have demanded suspended prison sentences ranging from three to twelve months for the accused. The judges will give their verdict in January.
Perhaps Madame Macron should have followed the late Queen’s maxim of ‘never complain, never explain’. Had she done so, the claims that she was a man would probably have not been covered across the world, from the BBC to the New York Times.
Barely anyone in France takes seriously the claim that Brigitte Macron is a man
But Macron felt compelled to take action after what began as a one-woman smear campaign turned into a global conspiracy theory. The American influencer, Candace Owens, began pushing the theory in 2024 and eventually released an eight-part podcast. She is being sued by the Macrons.
The originator of the claim that Brigitte is a man who transitioned is a Frenchwoman in her 50s called Natacha Rey. She took a dislike to Brigitte from the moment her husband was elected president in 2017 and began a three-year ‘investigation’ into her background. No one took any notice of Rey’s social media rants at first. That may have been because of the goodwill most people in France felt towards Brigitte Macron. She seemed like a grounded woman who was more in touch with the average citizen than her husband. They were prepared to overlook the ‘weird’ circumstances of how they met; she was a 39-year-old teacher, a married woman with three children, and he was a 15-year-old pupil in her theatre class.
In an Anglophone country more searching questions might have been asked by journalists but in France the fawning mainstream media depicted the union as an inspiring love story. As one paper wrote: ‘Two thwarted lovers ready to overcome all obstacles: the story begins like a Molière comedy.’
In the early days of Macron’s presidency, Brigitte earned the respect of the French by fronting a campaign against bullying in schools and supporting victims of violence. But then stories began emerging that eroded much of the goodwill: the €600,000 (£530,000) that the Elysee Palace spent on flowers in 2020, the year when Macron locked the French in their homes because of Covid.
In the summer of 2023 it was disclosed that Brigitte had forked out €315,808 (£278,000) on clothes in the past 12 months. ‘Brigitte Macron has a particular fondness for luxury items,’ explained a fashion magazine, listing her favourite designers as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Chanel.
The following year Brigitte made a guest appearance in Emily in Paris, the spectacularly vacuous Netflix sitcom that depicts the lives of the rich and frivolous in the French capital. It was not well received. France was in political turmoil, the country was ravaged by violence, the cost of living was soaring and here was Brigitte simpering on screen.
Barely anyone in France takes seriously the claim that Brigitte Macron is a man. But whereas a few years ago many would have sprung to her defence now they just shrug. They have scant sympathy even if, as one of Brigitte’s daughters told the court this week, her mother suffers from the ‘horrible’ things said about her. The view of the majority is ‘so what?’. They have suffered eight years of her husband’s chaotic presidency.
Brigitte was asked in an interview last December about the fraught relationship between her husband and his people. She replied that they ‘don’t deserve him’. It was a provocative remark and, judging from the slap Brigitte gave her husband a few weeks later, he can also drive her to distraction. ‘We are not an ideal couple,’ Brigitte said of her marriage in 2019. The French would agree.
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