Brigitte Macron’s life has ‘taken a turn for the worse’ after alleged cyberbullying, daughter says

Brigitte Macron’s daughter told a Paris court that sexist cyberbullying had negatively affected her mother’s health and living conditions.

41-year-old Tiphaine Ozier is the stepdaughter of French President Emmanuel Macron.

She took the stand on the second and final day of the trial of 10 people accused of spreading unsubstantiated claims about Brigitte Macron’s gender and sexuality.

Ms Macron, 72, has long been the subject of conspiracy theories claiming she is a transgender woman.

“It’s important that I’m here today to express the harm my mother has faced. I wanted to give an account of what her life was like from the moment she started to become the target of these attacks,” Ms Auzière said.

She added that she had noticed a change and “deterioration” in her mother’s health since the allegations surrounding her gender and sexuality began to swirl.

Ms Macron “had to be careful with her choice of outfits, with her pose… She knows very well that her image will be used to support these theories,” Ms Ozier said.

She said not a day went by that the claims were not somehow communicated to her mother – “even by someone who had good will and sympathy for her”.

Although her mother “learned to live with it,” Ms. Ozier said, she suffered the effects on her grandchildren, who were teased at school.

“She wasn’t elected, she didn’t ask anyone for anything and she’s being attacked.

Prosecutors are seeking suspended prison terms of three months to 12 months for the defendants and fines of up to 8,000 euros ($9,300).

Among the defendants – all between the ages of 41 and 65 – are an elected official, a gallerist and a teacher.

One – a man named Aurelien Poirson-Atlan – is accused of telling his 200,000 online followers that Ms Macron was a transgender woman and that the 24-year age difference between her and Emmanuel Macron amounted to “state-sanctioned pedophilia”.

Mr Poirson-Atlan told the court on Tuesday he was a “satirist” who simply wanted to present a “different point of view to that of the mainstream media”.

Two other defendants – self-styled independent journalist Natasha Ray and internet fortune teller Amandine Roy – had already been found guilty of defamation last year for claiming that France’s first lady never existed and that her brother had changed gender and started using her name. They were later acquitted by the Court of Appeal.

Other defendants also said they had exercised their “freedom of expression.” One of them demanded that Macron publish photos of a pregnant Brigitte Macron to prove that she is a biological woman.

The Macrons have already said they will present such evidence in court proceedings against right-wing US influencer Candice Owens.

Owens has repeatedly promoted her view that Brigitte Macron is a man, and in March 2024 she said she would bet her “entire professional reputation” on the accusation.

Earlier this year, Macron’s lawyer in the case, Tom Clare, told the BBC the couple would present photographic and scientific evidence to a US court to prove Ms Macron is a woman.

“It’s extremely upsetting to think that you have to go and undergo, present that kind of evidence,” he said.

Ms Macron first met her now husband when she was a teacher at his secondary school.

The couple married in 2007, when Mr Macron was 29 and Ms Macron was 54.