Brigitte Macron is facing a legal complaint from several organisations, including women’s rights groups, after she was filmed saying feminist protesters at a theatre show in Paris were “stupid bitches”.
More than 300 women – specifically 343, a historically symbolic number in French feminism – this week filed the complaint against the French first lady for public insult.
A video filmed last week showed Macron in discussion backstage at the Folies Bergère theatre in Paris with Ary Abittan, a French actor and comedian who was previously accused of rape.
She was attending his show with her daughter and some friends. The previous night, feminist campaigners had disrupted the show, shouting: “Abittan, rapist!”
Macron, 72, asked Abittan how he was feeling. When he said he was feeling scared, she referred to the protesters as “sales connes” (stupid bitches) and said if they reappeared “we’ll toss them out”.
Juliette Chapelle, a lawyer for the feminist groups who brought the case, told France Inter radio: “She’s France’s first lady, her words matter.”
Chapelle said Macron had appeared to be “very engaged in causes for women, but in reality we can say there’s a disconnect between her public speeches and what she really thinks”.
Magistrates terminated the investigation of the 2021 rape allegation against Abittan in 2024 due to a lack of evidence to bring it to trial. That decision was confirmed on appeal in January this year.
The feminist campaign group who took part in the theatre protest, Nous Toutes (All of Us), said its activists had disrupted Abittan’s show to protest against what it described as “the culture of impunity” around sexual violence in France.
“I am sorry if I hurt women victims,” Macron told the media outlet Brut this week, calling the remarks that were caught on video “private” comments.
But, she added: “I can’t regret them. True, I am the wife of the president of the republic, but I am above all myself. And so when I am in private, I can let myself go in a way that is not totally proper.”
The feminist groups who brought the legal complaint include Les Tricoteuses Hystériques (The Hysterical Knitters), which was founded in 2024 at the time of France’s biggest rape trial in which dozens of men were convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot, who had been drugged by her ex-husband.
A defence lawyer in that case called the women outside “hysterical” and “tricoteuses” – likening them to the women who watched and knitted as the guillotine fell during the French Revolution.
The number of 343 complainants references a 1971 petition for the legalisation of abortion in which 343 women said they had terminated pregnancies.
Several celebrities have voiced support for the feminist campaigners insulted by Macron by adopting the insultwith the hashtag #salesconnes.
The actor and director Judith Godrèche, a leading voice in France’s #MeToo movement who has filed complaints accusing two film directors of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager, posted on social media: “Me too – I’m also a salle conne (dirty, stupid bitch) and I support all the others.”
