Ten individuals convicted of online harassment against Brigitte Macron

A court in Paris has convicted ten people for engaging in the cyber-bullying of Brigitte Macron, the spouse of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron.

The defendants faced charges of circulating untruths regarding her gender identity and sexual orientation, in addition to publishing malicious remarks about the pair's significant age difference.

The court issued conditional custodial sentences of a maximum of eight months to the defendants. The detailed judgment has yet to be released.

A persistent false narrative claiming that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman has been in circulation since her husband's rise to the presidency in 2017.

This recent ruling in France is concurrent with the Macrons initiating a libel case in the United States against conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has likewise promoted analogous false narratives about the Brigitte Macron's biological sex.

Their complaint contends that Owens disregarded any factual proof disproving her claim in favour of amplify the voices of notorious conspiracy peddlers.

Owens has often echoed these assertions on her podcast and online platforms, and in March 2024 proclaimed that she would stake her entire professional reputation on her insistence that Mrs. Macron is biologically male.

Brigitte Macron first met her now-husband when she taught at his high school.

The pair married in 2007, when the future French president was 29 and she was 54.