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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.