President Emmanuel Macron has spoken out for the first time on the “false” conspiracy theory that his wife, French First Lady Brigitte Macron, was born a man, which a court recently ruled was libel.
Conspiracy theories about the gender of First Ladies are not unknown in the 21st century, but claims about the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron gained unusual prominence after members of the First Family — including the President himself — addressed the conspiracy, and a newspaper revealed a court ruled they are false and constitute libel.
French right-wing newspaper Le Figaro notes conspiracy theories about 70-year-old Brigitte Macron have been repeated since the national elections that saw Macron become President in 2017. However, they have gained currency again in recent weeks after his step-daughter addressed them in an interview. She had said in February that she felt concerned about the level of debate in French society after she heard of claims “about my mother being a man” circulating on social media.
Later speaking to a British newspaper, Brigitte Macron’s youngest daughter Tiphaine Auzière said: “It’s on the same level as people who say the earth is flat or that we are governed by reptiles”. Auzière is just six years younger than her step-father Macron, who entered into a relationship with her mother Brigitte when he was a teenager and she was his school teacher.
Last week, Macron denounced the conspiracy theory of Brigitte Macron being born a man and having transitioned in her thirties as “false and fabricated”. Broadcaster BFMTV states the President said he found the comments “frustrating” and that they had hurt his feelings. Macron said he had decided not to let them pass without an “indignant” response so they were challenged in the public sphere.
Indeed, two Youtubers who stated the claims on a stream were convicted in a French court of libel and handed fines in 2023. The Daily Mail, which claims to have seen the court papers from the defamation case, reported this month that “two women falsely said Brigitte Macron was born a man” and were handed $4,200 worth of fines between them. The report states the pair, clairvoyant Amandine Roy and freelance journalist Natacha Rey, appealed the fines and had them reduced, finally paying $2,600 between them.
The pair’s lawyer had denounced the treatment of his clients, particularly the fact they had been taken into police custody for making a YouTube video, claiming: “This looks like intimidation coming from ultra-protected people. If the theses she develops are so far-fetched, why go after her like this?”.
Asked by a journalist what the worst part of being President is, Macron had said the “Macho and sexist attacks… false information and invented scenarios” against the “powerful woman” he’s married to, which he said were hurtful and disturbed his private life. He added: “The worst things with this false information and these scenarios invented with nonsense, [is] people eventually believe them and disturb you, even in your intimacy”.
The remarks are not the first time Macron has spoken out personally to attack rumours about his personal life. During the 2017 Presidential Election, rumours circulated that candidate Macron had embarked on a gay affair with the chairman of France’s state broadcaster Mathieu Gallet, and Russian “bots” were accused of amplifying it. As noted, the French media stuck to its usual position of not reporting on the private lives of politicians — considering them sacrosanct and not relevant to the business government — until Macron himself spoke out to dismiss the claims.
Macron joked then: “If in dinners in town, people tell you that I lead a double life with Matthieu Gallet, it must be my hologram who escaped, it can’t be me.”
Gallet also addressed the claims years later, saying in 2022: “In French stories, there is always a mix between the serious and the less serious… I know you’re keen on sexual scandals in Britain but in France they take quite a detestable direction. Macron and I knew each other, of course, we had friends in common, but we had only ever actually met three or four times.” Speaking to The Times, Gallet said he believed the rumours had been started by Macron’s Socialist former colleagues, whom he defected from to create his own political platform in 2016, preparing his way to challenge for the presidency.
He said: “I think the socialists realised that Macron was ambitious and thought, ‘This guy, he’s going to beat us [in the race to become France’s next president]. We have to stop him by creating the rumour that he is gay’… ‘A heterosexual man cannot have a true relationship with a woman 24 years older than him, and therefore it means he is gay.’ It is an idea based in absolute misogyny.”
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