‘Don’t harass Brigitte Macron because she’s transgender. Harass her because she’s a paedophile.” Like countless others, the anonymous “Mother of Lizards” who issued this command to her several hundred followers on X remains undeterred from posting false and malicious rumours about the French first lady, despite last week’s high-profile trial of 10 people, facing criminal charges over alleged cyberbullying of Brigitte Macron.
The 10 went on trial accused of cyberbullying the 72-year-old mother and grandmother by spreading unsubstantiated claims about her gender and sexuality, and linking the near 25-year age gap with her husband to child sexual abuse.
In court, they denied any wrongdoing, said that they had small social media followings, or evoked lofty ideals like freedom of expression or speaking truth to power. Others explained away their comments as “satire”.
The case – which was wrapped up in two days, with a verdict due in January – came after Emmanuel Macron and his wife had been dogged by conspiracy theories since 2017, when he was first elected president.
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Those rumours remained on the far-right fringes until they were seized upon by the US influencer Candace Owens, who made a lucrative career out of relaying absurdities to her millions of YouTube subscribers. The Macrons are now separately suing her for defamation.
Why does Brigitte Macron attract such vitriol?
The campaign being waged against her gained traction in a way that similar crusades against public figures like Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris have not. This is at least partly due to what French commentators discreetly refer to as the “atypical” nature of Brigitte Macron’s relationship with her husband, whom she met when she was a 39-year-old teacher, and he a teenage schoolboy.
Even in a country known for its laissez-faire attitude to what goes on behind the closed doors of its political class, their dynamic piques the public’s interest.
Author and journalist Emmanuelle Anizon, who has written extensively about cyberbullying, says the conspiracy theories concerning Brigitte Macron are no longer confined to the fanatics or those with a political axe to grind against her husband.
Those who went on trial, she points out, included a computer specialist, a gallery owner, and an elected official. “That’s the most concerning part. They’re Mr and Mrs Everyman. These rumours about the president and his wife have become a joke, something that’s discussed at dinner parties.”
But the testimony given to the court by one of Brigitte Macron’s daughters revealed nothing at all lighthearted about the harmful consequences of such sexist and transphobic chatter.
Tiphaine Auzière detailed how her mother now suffers from “deep anxiety” and pays constant attention to the clothing she wears and how she carries herself in public for fear of how her image may be distorted or used against her.
Brigitte Macron has become a whip with which to beat a dismally unpopular president, according to political scientist Flora Bolter.
Approval ratings for Emmanuel Macron have dropped to record lows amid deep political and economic uncertainty and widespread frustration over his handling of the collapse of successive governments.
It is, Bolter says, a “perfect storm” with the Macrons the “ideal target”. Bolter, who is co-director of the LGBTI+ Observatory at the Jean Jaurès Foundation, says that homophobic slurs are used by online trolls as a weapon to indirectly attack men by questioning the femininity of their partners. “Given that Emmanuel Macron has previously been subject to homophobic discourse, he is easy prey,” she says.
“While it’s not an insult to be called transgender, it’s very clearly an insult to those who are pushing this agenda.”
Part of it, too, is the irresistibility of the idea – which is gaining traction everywhere – that “the elite” are involved in a cover-up. “There’s also an ambient notion that people in power are hiding things from us. Some of these online commentators believe it’s their duty as French citizens to expose that,” Bolter says.
There is also an underlying narrative, promulgated by conservative and far-right politicians and media outlets, which portrays France as being in a period of irreversible decline. That sentiment appears to play into surveys which suggest that confidence in state institutions is being eroded, and fears that the country has become a laughing stock on the international stage.
It has recently lost a string of prime ministers, jailed a former president (Nicolas Sarkozy, who was imprisoned for corruption), and been humiliated by an audacious heist at the Louvre.
Despite, or perhaps more accurately, because of the seemingly unstoppable spread of the online vitriol, the Macrons were determined to make a stand.
She may feel she has little choice. Even as the cyberbullying case made headlines everywhere, hackers accessed her official French tax profile to give her a male name, while a handful of international media outlets this week reported on claims made by a “close friend” and first published by RTL Radio and Bild that she had expressed the fear “that her trousers might bulge between her legs in public because that may fuel the ludicrous rumours that she was born a man”.
