Brigitte Macron awarded damages over false trans claim

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00:00The YouTube video at the centre of the case sparked a frenzy of online rumour-mongering

00:05by conspiracy theorists and the far-right. A court here in France has ordered two women

00:10to pay 8,000 euros in damages to First Lady Brigitte Macron after they made false claims

00:16that she was transgender. Macron filed a libel complaint against the two women who posted the

00:22footage, alleging that she'd once been a man named Jean-Michel. The claim went viral just

00:27weeks before the 2022 presidential election. Well, to discuss the impact such a case might

00:34have on the transgender community, we're joined now by Flora Bolter, co-director of the LGBTI

00:41Plus Observatory at the Fondation Jean Jaurès. Thank you so much for being with us on the

00:47programme this evening. Brigitte Macron, she didn't attend this trial, she wasn't present

00:53for the ruling. Many people might be wondering this evening why she went to such bother to

00:58suppress claims that were so obviously false. Why did the presidency take the video so seriously

01:04and what do you make of this case? Well, it's a very complex case because the video in question

01:11was an extremely long video with very harebrained theories about how Brigitte Macron was the same

01:20person as her brother. And this, I think the main problem with this video was that it made big news

01:28and it was very viral at one point and that was during the campaign. So there was, it did

01:37create some impact and some blowback on the president's campaign and on Brigitte Macron's

01:45life at that time. She received quite a lot of abuse at that time. So I think the idea was to

01:53respond to this and not let it slide basically. But the question of how exactly to name and to

02:03qualify what was said has been extremely complicated. Yeah, and do you believe that

02:10she could have responded differently perhaps? Were you surprised that this video was subject

02:15to legal action at the highest levels of the French state? Well, I'm not surprised in the

02:21sense that there is a strong will on the part of the French government and on the part of French

02:26authorities in recent years to counter and to attack, to respond blow by blow to conspiracy

02:36theories and to attack all these sorts of videos as opposed to just turning a blind eye to it,

02:44which would probably be the most common approach. So that was also a way to show that

02:53the president and Brigitte Macron took this issue seriously and were intent on using

02:59the possibilities of the law and possibilities that had been increased in recent years in 2020

03:05on questions of conspiracy theories and online harassment. But I think that it was not necessarily

03:14very well thought out in terms of legal ramifications and qualifications. The initial

03:21case was brought on questions of privacy laws, which was a bit bizarre, and the prosecution

03:31changed that to a libel case, which also raises another question, which is how does one consider

03:40allegations that a person is transgender? So it's in that sense, if they had wanted to do

03:48something in favor of trans rights, then probably a case could have been brought with trans organizations

03:55and bringing attention to transphobia and to the impact of transphobia on people's lives.

04:02The choice which was made was very conservative and the attack, the problem with the whole

04:14situation was connected not to, as you know, in French libel law, the issue was not whether

04:22being transgender is an attack on her honor, but more on questions of did it expose her to

04:28a loss of reputation among some voters? And I think that's what the courts had in mind when

04:36they said that there had indeed been a defamation. But this defamation is absolutely correlated to

04:43the fact that there is transphobia and is not separable from the fact that being called

04:48transgender also exposes one to transphobia. And not an attack on her honor, as you say, Flora,

04:55but what kind of a message do cases like this send to people who are actually transgender?

05:02Well, it's a bit bizarre because it could be interpreted, it could be taken as a case to

05:09further the right to privacy and to say that people should not, you know, there are many people

05:15online who have a very intense life trying to transvesticate, as they say, many different people.

05:22So this could be used to protect them against these people who have huge campaigns attacking

05:29pretty much everyone and accusing them of being transgender, which in their view is a negative thing.

05:36So that it could certainly be used against outing or against unwanted and or unwarranted

05:45speculations about their gender identity. But it could also be said, some people might

05:52also view it as saying that being transgender is in and of itself considered a bad thing

05:58or could be assimilated to a form of label in and of itself, which of course would not be a

06:07very positive move and would not necessarily be very favorable to trans people in general.

06:14It is a complicated case, as you say, Flora. We will have to leave it there for now, but thank you so

06:19much for your time on the programme with us. That's Flora Boulter, co-director of the LGBTI

06:24Plus Observatory at the Fondation Jean Jaurès.

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