Brigitte Macron, Michelle Obama or Jacinta Ardern … these women in power have one thing in common: they have been the victims in their own countries of a campaign of misinformation about their identity, gender or sexuality in order to ridicule and humiliate them.
These actions have alarmed the UN, which denounced in a report last April “increasing online sexist misinformation campaigns” with the main goal of “women journalists, politicians, gender equality activists”.
For months, posts have been flooding social media claiming that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman named Jean-Michel at birth … and posts increased in late December, a few months before the French presidential election. .
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Arden and former US First Lady Michelle Obama have also been the target of rumors in 2017 and 2018 that they also wanted to be born male.
These rumors are spreading on the Internet and it does not matter that no one believes that Brigitte Macron, for example, was born a man. They simply open the door to abusive comments, slander, mud and cyberbullying.
Like the repeated attacks on these powerful women, gender identity misinformation actually affects wider groups of women and members of sexual minorities involved in public life at various levels of responsibility.
These campaigns against them are aimed at silencing and expelling them from the political sphere, according to Lucina De Meko, a feminist and one of the founders of #ShePersisted, an initiative that fights against misinformation campaigns.
The rumors have a “real-life impact”, says Marily Breig, a member of the French feminist organization Nous Toutes, which fights against sexist, sexual and financial assaults.
As a result, “the person exposed in public can be driven to ruin his career”, a phenomenon that is often accompanied by harassment both online and offline.
Stereotypes
In 2013, Laura Boldrini, the former speaker of the Italian parliament, was rumored to have danced in her underwear on television, with thousands of sexist insults, threats of rape and pornographic montages.
Idtar Ahmed Yassim, a candidate in the 2018 Iraqi parliamentary elections, was forced to retire, amid allegations by Internet users that she had been recognized as a pornographic film.
By preventing or discouraging these women from participating in public life, gender-based misinformation contributes to insulting democratic institutions, according to #ShePersisted Lucina De Meko.
In the case of the rumors against Brigitte Macron, gender reassignment is used as a “vehicle” to destroy the reputation of someone in power in the social hierarchy, in this case Emanuel Macron, according to Maud-Yeuse Thomas, anthropologist and of the founders of the Observatoire des transidentités, an information website on gender reassignment.
The spread of such rumors about trans people or homosexuals enhances the stigma of members of the LOATKI + community.
Blaming Brigitte Macron for “hidden masculinity”, those who spread the rumor use the transition of gender identity, which they consider humiliating, says Marie-Joseph Bertini, Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.
But they are also taking advantage of rumors to reactivate the other rumor that her relationship with Emanuel Macron “necessarily hides” a homosexual relationship, a rumor that was circulated to be used during the 2017 election campaign.
In addition to targeting powerful individuals, these disinformation campaigns are likely to “increase hate crimes against members of the LGBTQI + community in Europe in recent years”, the European Parliament warned in July.
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