French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte Macron, is suing an individual after a rumor that the First Lady was actually born a man and transitioned to being a female spread like wildfire via the internet.
The Daily Caller noted that “the claims originated with a journal by a woman named Natacha Rey and later spread to the masses after being discussed on a YouTube broadcast that featured anti-vaxxers, skeptics of COVID-19 and right-wing activists.”
This ordeal started in September after a right-wing website pushed the claim that the First Lady’s real name is Jean-Michel Trogneux but legally changed it and her sex sometime thereafter. According to the media, Macron’s lawyers have pinpointed one individual as the progenitor of the rumor.
“Trogneux” is Brigitte’s maiden-name, and while she may have had an interesting life, there is nothing in an ABC News profile of her to suggest she was born a male:
She was born Brigitte Trogneux in Amiens, the same town as her future husband. Born into a French chocolate dynasty with a history stretching back to the 17th century, she became a French and Latin teacher at the elite La Providence Lycee Jesuit school in the town where she grew up.
The French president originally met his now-wife when he was 15-years-old and she was his 39-year-old high school drama teacher. The two apparently had an affair that ended her marriage to her first husband:
It was here in 1993 that she met the teenage Emmanuel, whom she has said astonished her with his intelligence and precociousness.
They bonded during sessions in the high school drama club, which she organized. During this time they jointly penned a rewrite of the play, “The Art of Comedy” by Eduardo de Filippo.
When Emmanuel Macron’s parents discovered he was involved with his teacher, they moved him to a different school in Paris. Brigitte Macron has said of this period in their romance that he vowed to return one day to marry her.
In 2007 — a year after she officially divorced her first husband — the former pupil and teacher wed.
According to BBC, critics are wondering why Macron is even paying any attention to the conspiracy at all:
What many people are asking is why Brigitte Macron is going to law at all to suppress so ludicrous a fabrication. Did Elvis’s relatives file suit when told he was alive and well, having been spotted eating ham and grits in a Memphis roadhouse?
Filing suit before the courts can give the impression to the conspiracy-minded that there is indeed something to suppress. Otherwise, why would they be taking it so seriously?
But in truth there is no evidence that anyone – beyond a handful of idiots – regards the Brigitte transgender story as plausible.
Journalists and internauts alike can overstate the importance of internet traffic. So the story got a lot of hits? That doesn’t mean anyone actually believed it.