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Can anybody fill me in on this? I'd seen some Stupid Internet Shit about this but thought it was just edgy nonsense in the same vein about Michelle Obama really being a man. But apparently there's a mini-cottage industry in peddling tales of goings-on in the French president's private and political life?
I don't know who Candace Owens is, and although I've seen her name mentioned online, I deliberately refrained from finding out more because I don't have the time or inclination to go down those rabbit holes. But now the Stupid Edgy Internet Shit is mainstream news, so I am reluctantly requesting information. Can Owens get away with the "clown nose on, clown nose off" Jon Stewart defence of "hey, I'm a comedian and an entertainer, this was just satirical comedy and not meant to be current affairs reporting"? Will we see President and Madame Macron turning up in a Delaware court? How do you tactfully question a witness as to "Yes, you started a romantic affair with your now-husband when you were his teacher and he was in the same class as one of your kids, and his parents tried to separate you so a bit of yikes there, but you are not related to him and so the charges of incest are wrong, as are claims that you were born a male"?
I find it mind-boggling that this nonsense is apparently being taken so seriously, but I guess Emmanuel finally snapped after all the jokes about his height and his 'hot for teacher' marriage. Also it seems that Owens didn't originate these claims, as they started in France, so can that be a defence too?
Seems like an easy Occam's razor to me. Either Candace Owens is just bullshitting with the obvious incentive that she is rewarded with views and attention and money, or she of all people stumbled on hard proof that the first lady of France is transgender, hard proof that is strong enough to overcome the questions of "Why would no one else know about this till now?" and "she somehow faked three pregnancies?" but also isn't able to be shared to convince others to overcome their prior.
Also consider that this is part of a movement accusing large amounts of celebrity women to be secretly trans. It seems like the standards of evidence they use might be pretty weak, or maybe Taylor Swift/Jennifer Lopez/Lady Gaga/the Kardashians/etc are really trans after all.
It's also possible that Candace Owens is crazy, and she legitimately believes this despite being wrong- because, it bears repeating, she is crazy.
Also possible. Or a mixture, people are really good at just convincing themselves of things if they are rewarded for it.
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Horseshoe theory strikes again, given that accusation requires an implicit belief that it's possible for a transwoman with as much and long history of public exposure as these celebrities do to pass as ciswoman.
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The person who is now Mrs Macron was born in 1953. Given the prevalence of people transitioning at that time, I think it is very unlikely that she went m2f before she was 30 or at whatever age she met her future husband.
If she was known as a "that weird cross-dressing teacher" back then, I think the media would have reported on it, the story of their marriage is obviously too juicy for the tabloid vultures to not have been picked to the bone years ago.
France has sufficiently strong privacy laws that it probably would not have been reported until Macron came to the attention of the English-speaking press, which is around the time he started running for President.
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I always get so furious when writers or journalists or whatever just so brazenly make things up to suit their needs.
Is just an insanely twisted way of framing that forum.
I feel like this is where the change in media stems from - constant lies that are propagated by framing.
I understand this is sort of meaningless but to me it’s every story every time on every subject.
Bruh, this
has been the header on /b/ since the 00s. They embrace it.
Bruh, that … correctly points out what I’m saying.
A publication is ironically using disinformation about the forum.
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That's like claiming The Onion and The Babylon Bee are disinformation sites. If it's labeled as fiction it's not disinformation.
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Different boards have completely different cultures. /b/ is not /pol/ is not /k/ is not /r9k/.
Yeah but the hacker anonymous runs them all.
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Probability estimates, anyone?
Consider that you, in American spaces, only knew vaguely of Owens before news of "Sued by the wife of the President of France." Why is the French First Family taking this so seriously? It's witch-hunt logic but given that no matter the result of this lawsuit, millions of people will become new believers in Brigitte being a man, the only winning move is not to play.
P(Woman) is highest if they'd never acknowledged it. It's inherently undignified for any woman to "prove" what they are, it's a debacle for the French First Lady.
P(Man) increases with threat of litigation, and I'd argue it probably increases further with the actual filing of suit. Owens' defense could argue for medical testing. It's the point of the lawsuit and Owens will argue the documents were forged and that justifies tests. In the fictional court-of-perfectly-principled-justice Brigitte might be ordered to be tested, in the real world there's not a judge in the US who will order such testing for the wife of the President of France. It would be itself an instant international incident beside the separate incident of a US court rejecting the authenticity of French government documents. Point being here, P(Man) is superficially but not actually reduced by taking the matter to court, even US courts where truth is an absolute defense.
Another is P(MSM Emmanuel) and P(Emmanuel's Behest). Doesn't take much to find him in some very homoerotic pictures, and maybe that's a French thing, genuinely. If it's not and he is a man who has sex with men, this could be his closeted overreaction. Although now that I think about it, I wonder what would happen if someone with reach alleged this with Melania Trump. Does Don bring the hammer down? But Macron and Trump are very different men.
There's also P(Third-Party Plot); a US faction seeing an opportunity to financially crush Owens and the Macrons assisting an ally, perhaps not entirely willingly. This is an enormous reach but it still makes more sense than the First Lady of France suing a gauche American for calling her a man.
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I did maybe 3 minutes of digging/following links and names. I guess the original allegation's source is basically some citizen-journalist nutjob with "three years" of research, popularized when they were hosted by a spirit medium/fortune teller YouTuber, and they already lost a more minor defamation case over the issue in France.
So basically Owens' main defense would normally be that she was just echoing other research/relating what she heard, but since she doubled down it seems like she's down to the last bit of the US law, which is if she displayed "actual malice" or not. My feeling is that this lawsuit is probably going to go against Owens, which is rare, but the situation at a glance appears to be more or less a textbook example of what a US court considers defamation. I disagree that she would have a good "just joking" defense because she isn't really a comedian. I guess you could try the Fox News "it's entertainment" but again - she doubled down and even allegedly referenced the cease and desists she got, so that weakens the attempt substantially.
It's a bit embarrassing to go to court over it, and risks of course a Streisand Effect, but I think there is probably some actual power in winning a court case to slow rumors like that. Or, Brigitte herself is annoyed enough - not to stereotype too much, but she is at that age where it's appealing to do something like this.
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I think Owens' defense will be that she genuinely believed (and believes) her claims to be true. In the US, to prevail on defamation against a public figure, you have to show actual malice. I don't think she meets that standard. I really do think she believes it.
Recklessness with regard to truth is sufficient to establish actual malice.
"I heard it on the internet and it was too good to check" is a textbook example of recklessness with regard to truth.
She has a three plus hour video series where she goes over what she considers to be the "evidence" in favor of her claim. She has "checked" and is convinced by the "evidence."
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Another instance of “heads I win, tails you lose” feminist victimology. Calling a woman manly is misogynistic. Calling a man womanly would also be misogynistic. I imagine there is some jiu-jistsu or just-so story one can deploy to creatively yes_chad.jpg it.
Yes, charitably, both can be misogynistic. Saying that a woman is secretly a man is mainly an attack on female politicians in the US, you don't see conspiracy theories that Biden or Trump are actually secretly female. In this way, it's misogynistic since it's an attack that disproportionately targets women.
Tim Walz was criticised for acting in effeminate ways. Not physically being a woman but acting like a woman.
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For now you don't.
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My first thought was that she's being sued in Delaware, and in the United States, unlike Europe, truth is an absolute defense against slander and defamation. So getting a medical exam on record is likely to be Candace Owen's first order of business, and then it's over one way or the other.
There are various non-invasive tests for karyotype. If Mme Macron is 46XX, no court is going to order a physical examination.
Owens' only defense here is going to be "I was joking and everyone knows it, so my claims don't count as statements of fact." The US courts are surprisingly willing to accept that defence (see "pedo guy") but Owens calling Mme Macron a man consistently over several years makes it harder.
Can you run two inconsistent defences in a civil trial in the US? You can in a criminal trial ("I didn't kill him, and if I did it was self defence.") But in England that isn't allowed in a civil case. Even if she can, I suspect Owens doesn't ask for medical tests because it makes it harder to make "I was joking" stick.
I mean, I find it ridiculous that a 4chan, sorry, I mean "notorious disinformation hub 4chan" meme is being taken this seriously, but then I remember the OK sign. And it seems some French political rag started it, but that's French politics. All the support for Charlie Hebdo printing cartoons of Mohammed (and I mean this quite separately from the attacks and firebombing) should also extend to stupid right-wing satire about the left-wing president's missis. I acknowledge it's not very comfortable for Mme. Macron, but her husband should be thicker-skinned because yeah, politics.
I hate to give Owens anything, but a free-speech defence may be the way to go here: 'if you are happy about re-publishing cartoons mocking a venerated figure for a couple of billion people, then le président can suck it up'. I think "this claim is so bonkers nobody can possibly take it at face value, seeing as how the woman has given birth to three kids, so this is plainly satirical and not meant as serious political commentary much less claims to be factual" is how it'll go.
Legally, there is a big difference between false statements of fact and disrespectful cartoons.
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It's been successfully deployed by both Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson, also.
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Sounds good to me. Like I said, get the medical test, open and shut case from there.
Stonewall about the medical test... well...
They shouldn't even need a medical test, just hospital records of the birth of her kids. So, yeah: I think the ridiculousness of the claims undercuts the Macrons' case. Had Owens been claiming that Mme. Macron was a cougar who had sex with then-15 year old Emmanuel when he was a student in her class, then sure, go ahead with the defamation case. But "she's saying I'm really a man! who stole someone else's identity! and then married my blood-related literally young enough to be my son husband so we're in a gay incestuous underage relationship!" is so extreme, the standard of "would a reasonable person be led to believe this?" can't be proven. And Michelle Obama hasn't sued anybody for similar claims, so it makes the Macrons look even more thin-skinned and, dare I say it, Trumpian?
And her children look like her, so a secretly-adopted-conspiracy can be dismissed.
Clones or genetic chimera.
Let me add to defamation by positing even more ridiculous epicycles.
Like Kath Two from Seveneves.Later epigenetically transformed into Kath Three. But also trans.
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From the article:
That another person is her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux who supposedly disappeared but in fact transitioned.
What’s your view on it? There are French rightists online who believe it (and who appear to be the source of the whole thing).
I did a cursory search online to find evidence that Jean-Michel Trogneux does exist, is in good health and denied the allegations. I didn't find any, that's for sure.
It’s possible, but it seems unlikely that one of the probably first few hundred medically transitioned people ever (maybe even the first hundred; there were a couple pre-war, a handful postwar, and then a trickle in the 1960s and 1970s) happened to hide it in an elaborate conspiracy and then became First Lady of France.
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Candance Owens was a hot star in conservative commentariat - a black well spoken conservative woman. She built her own following then was also part of Shapiro's Daily Wire until they went their separate way after conflict about Jews/Israel after October 7.
As for what is happening - did you ever crack some edgy jokes in your friend group, maybe something like "Hitler did nothing wrong" etc. only to find out that this one guy actually took it literally and did not get it as a joke? That is Canace Owens for you when it comes to some of her stuff including Obama/Macron being transgender. It is a meme going on way back like when Joan Rivers offhandedly had a remark that Michelle is a tranny.
Not going to fly in my friend group. We all agree losing wars is wrong.
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This is also part of it. I can't understand how Owens transitioned (heh!) from "well-regarded conservative commentator" to whatever the heck she's doing now.
She's always been an anti-semite(this is common for both blacks and right wing hardliners), she just couldn't keep it under wraps after October 7 and got fired because her boss is Jewish. From there she spiraled because she was hanging out with professional antisemites.
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Any one paying attention would have noticed that there was no reason to regard her well as a commentator right from the get go. Her "debut" was during Gamergate, she was trying to get in on a left wing, anti-gamergate grift, got aggressive pushback as she was encroaching on another grifter's turf, then in a week she reappered, rebranded as right wing, likely after noticing that there was tremendous alpha in being a black woman right winger.
Of course, that only works for so long. If you don't really have any worthwhile insight as a commentator to pivot from into doing serious work, the only way to keep the grift going is to go for ever crazier, more radical positions in order to try and keep the spotlight on you.
She seems to be a true believer. She’s just crazy.
"Becoming the mask" can happen to grifters, but I cannot believe she started from a position of sincerity. Maybe she deluded or reasoned herself into it.
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She was always crazy, but when she turned against Jews she lost the leash.
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She was always a grifter.
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This is a funny kind of idiocy, in the sense that not only is it objectively and very obviously false, but that it also obscures a more interesting controversial element. It would be like if someone's main criticism of Trump (being otherwise a generic liberal) was that he was not an American, but actually Burmese. (edit: on further reflection, what is actually quite similar is the claim I see pop up on reddit that the attempted assassination where Trump was grazed by a bullet was entirely faked, and he was not shot, or shot at, at all)
I only tangentially know who Owens is but I strongly suspect, like in many many other cases, this is another instance of social media-induced psychosis
Where's his longform birth certificate?
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Finally an explanation for orange man! Not orange, Oriental!
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