Rumors about Brigitte Macron's gender identity are not abating. What you need to know
Brigitte Macron is the first Lady of France. She is 24 years older than her husband, President Emmanuel Macron, and has been at the center of scandals ever since she became a public figure. Now she is back at the peak of her unpopularity amid another wave of rumors that she was allegedly a man in the past. In July, the first lady lost a defamation lawsuit filed against Natasha Ray, a journalist who investigated the subject. At about the same time, information appeared about the death of a doctor who could allegedly prove that Brigitte had undergone a sex reassignment operation. Where is the truth and where is the fiction — in the material of Izvestia.
Who benefits from rumors
• Rumors about Brigitte Macron's transgenderism (the international LGBT movement is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) began to spread actively before the French presidential elections in 2022, when Emmanuel Macron was re-elected for a second term. The expert community believes that they are primarily beneficial to right-wing parties.
• At the same time, French society is quite tolerant of such things, and it is unlikely that the promotion of the topic of the president's orientation and the gender of his wife will bury his political career. The French criticize their leader for other reasons (for example, he is considered the president of the rich) and generally calmly, sometimes even positively react to the scandals associated with him.
Experts draw attention to the fact that Macron is considered a representative of the globalist establishment, which rejects traditional values. And this elite has opponents — representatives of conservative circles, who are fighting it, including with the help of stuffing.
• According to experts, attacks related to gender or orientation are not so much an attempt to discredit Macron himself as an attack on the entire globalist Western establishment. This, for example, confirms the fact that similar rumors once circulated about Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the United States.
Brigitte Tronier and Emmanuel Macron met in 1993. At that time, Emmanuel was 15 years old, and Brigitte was 39. She worked as a teacher of literature and dramatic art at the Catholic Lyceum in Amiens. Emmanuel attended the same school and was a classmate of her eldest daughter. At that time, Brigitte was married to the banker Andre-Louis Ozier. They had three children.
What are they talking about
• In the world of big politics, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron had to deal with a lot of rumors. For example, when Macron ran for president in 2017, he was accused of having homosexual relations (the international LGBT movement is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia) with the head of Radio France and that his marriage to Brigitte was a cover for this relationship. The politician strongly rejected the gossip.
• In May of this year, a video appeared where the first lady strikes Macron in the face area while exiting an airplane in Vietnam. After that, the British tabloids talked to a lip-reading specialist, who said that when the Macrons were already descending the ramp and Emmanuel was about to offer his wife his hand, she rejected him with the words: "Stay away, loser." The media wrote that this incident indicates a serious rift in the relationship between the spouses. At the same time, the president himself said that the incident had been misinterpreted — the couple were allegedly just joking.
• In July, another awkward moment was captured on video when the Macrons arrived in the UK to meet with the royal family. The footage shows them getting off the plane, the president holds out his hand to his wife to help her down the stairs, but she seems to have ignored her husband's gesture and preferred to hold on to the railing.
Where did the rumors about Brigitte Macron's transgenderism come from
• Another topic that has been haunting the Macrons for many years is related to the rumors about Brigitte's transgenderism. They appeared in 2021, a few months before the presidential election, after the far-right magazine Faits et Documents reported on the results of an investigation into the first lady and her alleged transsexuality. The author of the article was freelance journalist Natasha Ray. In total, the magazine published nine articles devoted to the "secret" of the first lady. Their essence boiled down to the fact that Brigitte was born a man and in fact her name is Jean-Michel Tronier (in fact, that's her brother's name).
Meanwhile, a video appeared on the Internet with Natasha Ray and Amandine Roy, who calls herself a clairvoyant. It claimed, in particular, that Brigitte's first husband had never existed, and the children were not hers.
• In 2022, Brigitte Macron sued for defamation. The court of first instance found Natasha Ray guilty, fined her €500, and ordered her to pay €8,000 in moral compensation to Brigitte Macron and €5,000 to her brother Jean—Michel Tronier. However, on July 10 of this year, the Court of Appeal acquitted the journalist. Now she is preparing a counterclaim accusing the first lady and her brother of misleading the court. Brigitte Marcon also made it clear that she would not leave this case.
• In 2024, statements about the transgenderism of the first lady were promoted by American political commentator Candice Owens, an outspoken supporter of US President Donald Trump. This year, she released several videos called "Becoming Brigitte" (a book by Xavier Poussard, the former editor—in-chief of Faits et Documents, was published with the same name not so long ago). And recently, Owens claimed that in February, Trump personally called her and persuaded her to stop discussing Macron's wife — the French president allegedly asked him to do this during a visit to the White House.
What else are the rumors about Brigitte Macron based on?
• In early July, the Enquete du Jour portal published a story about the death of surgeon Francois Fevre, who claimed to have information about Brigitte Macron's sex reassignment surgery. But he didn't have time to tell about it — the article says that he was found dead after falling from a height. The publication quotes the words of his sister Fevre, who claims that he had no suicidal tendencies. There is also a video in the article in which the alleged Dr. Fevre claims to be a colleague of plastic surgeon Patrick Bouilly, who allegedly performed surgeries on Brigitte Macron (in 2019, the French media actually wrote that Brigitte had plastic surgery at the clinic where Bouilly works, but there were no details).
• Fact Checkers, a Greek independent organization that checks fake news, verified the information about Fevre's death and found out that the Enquete du Jour portal was created just five days before the scandalous publication, and the video with a fragment of Fevre's interview was made using AI. In addition, it turned out that the article was signed by the name of journalist Audrey Parmentier, who, according to the "Fact Checkers", had nothing to do with its writing. It also turned out that the team of authors of the Enquete du Jour contains the names of other real-life journalists. But none of them work on this site, they are currently thinking about filing a lawsuit. The results of the fact-checking allow us to doubt not only the death, but also the fact of the existence of surgeon Francois Fevre.
During the preparation of the material, Izvestia communicated with:
- political scientist Alexey Yaroshenko;
- Vadim Trukhachev, a political scientist, Associate professor at the Faculty of International Relations of the Russian State University of Economics.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
