Paris court finds 10 people guilty of cyberbullying Brigitte Macron

A Paris court has found 10 people guilty of cyberbullying Brigitte Macron, wife of President of France Emmanuel Macron, the BBC reports. The judge found that the defendants made false claims about Macron's gender and sexuality, and "malicious remarks" about the 24-year age gap between Macron and her spouse.

The defendants, eight men and two women, received a range of sentences, including jail time up to eight months and mandatory online harassment awareness training. Five of the defendants will also lose access to their X accounts for six months, according to The New York Times.

Key to the lawsuit is the fringe belief that Brigitte Macron was born a man - proponents for some reason believe Macron is Jean-Michel Trogneux, her older brother - and transitioned to living as a woman at some point later in life. This style of "transvestigation" is an unfortunately common type of online conspiracy theory, a roundabout way to both spread hateful rhetoric about transgender people and bully cisgender people at the same time. The campaign against Macron has the added twist of her age: Brigitte Macron is 72, 24 years older than President Macron. The pair married in 2007, but their age difference has been an ongoing narrative throughout Emmanuel Macron's political career.

In July 2025, Macron also filed a defamation lawsuit in the US against Candace Owens, a right-wing podcaster and conspiracy theorist. Owens has made multiple attempts since 2024 to spread false claims about Macron's gender, and has said that she's willing to stake her "entire professional reputation" that she's right.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/paris-court-finds-10-people-guilty-of-cyberbullying-brigitte-macron-195500994.html?src=rss