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France’s elegant first lady, Brigitte Macron, is about to take the extraordinary step of going to trial in a Paris court to fight a conspiracy theory — amplified last month by American conservative commentator Candace Owens — that she was born a man.

“After looking into this, I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” Owens wrote in a Tuesday post on X, formerly Twitter. “Any journalist or publication that is trying to dismiss this plausibility is immediately identifiable as establishment. I have never seen anything like this in my life. The implications here are terrifying.”

Brigitte, 70, has long been the subject of fascination because of her marriage to the much younger Emmanuel Macron, 46. The two met in northern France when he was a 15-year-old student and she was his drama teacher, and wed in 2007.

But now wild claims, made by two female French Internet influencers, that she was actually born Jean-Michel Trogneux and became a trans woman in the 1980s have electrified France.

The French scornfully call it part of the burgeoning “complosphère,” or world of conspiracy theories.

Mme. Macron’s libel trial is set for June, where she will face off against the right-wing accuser and freelance journalist Natacha Rey, who hides behind avatars to push rumors that powerful members of the French establishment are hiding Brigitte’s true identity.

Emmanuel Macron has angrily hit back at the rumors, calling them “false and fabricated.”

He was unusually candid and emotional about the ongoing speculation about his wife, whom he married in 2007.

“The worst thing is the false information and fabricated scenarios,” Macron said at an International Women’s Day event in Paris in February after he guaranteed the right to abortion in France’s Constitution.

“People eventually believe them and disturb you, even in your intimacy.”

The bizarre saga began back in December 2021 when Rey, 49, a self-described freelance journalist and Amandine Roy, 53, who calls herself a clairvoyant, made a now-deleted YouTube video as part of Roy’s online show “Mediumsation,” in which they claimed that Brigitte was born as a baby boy called Jean-Michel Trogneux in 1953.

After Owens’ tweet, Brigitte’s Paris lawyer Jean Ennochi said he requested the trial date involving the defamation case against Rey be moved up to June 2024. It had originally been scheduled for March 2025.

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