French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte Macron, has filed a lawsuit against two women in Paris for spreading false conspiracy rumours on the Internet that she was a transgender woman, Agence France-Presse reports, citing a judicial source.
It was noted that the first hearing in the civil case was scheduled for 15 June.
This January Brigitte Macron had accused those questioning her gender identity of altering information on online genealogy sites to prove that she was her brother. “They changed my family tree”, she lamented at the time.
In December 2021, lawyer Jean Ennochi confirmed to the AFP news agency reported that the wife of the French president - an ex-schoolteacher with three children and seven grandchildren from a former marriage – intended to sue the instigators of the transgender conspiracy theory targeting her.
"She has decided to initiate proceedings, it is in progress," stated Ennochi.
French media traced the original story pushing the rumour that the First Lady of France was born as a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux to the Facebook page of "Natasha Rey", a self-described "journalist".
French President Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigitte leave home before voting in the first of two rounds of parliamentary elections in Le Touquet, France, June 11, 2017.
© REUTERS / Philippe Wojazer
The theory further gained traction in mid-October 2021 following the publication of an article in "Faits et documents" magazine founded in 1996 by right-wing figure, Emmanuel Ratier. Nearly two weeks later, on 1 November, the unsubstantiated claims began circulating online, with the hashtag #JeanMichelTrogneux particularly surging mid-December in France on Twitter, according to Le Figaro.
Trogneux is Brigitte Macron’s maiden name.