Emmanuel Macron slap sparks debate about equality between the sexes

A woman gets hit in the face and it’s game over. As it bloody should be. A man? Calm down, they’re just showing the world how close they are. They’re just horsing around.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron. Picture: AP

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The French President, Emmanuel Macron, is many things in my humble opinion. A tiny, teeny, little man (and I don’t mean in physical stature). A weak leader. A cheese-eating surrender monkey. He’s the man who has overseen the systemic decline of French culture and social cohesion.

But is he an abused husband?

Nobody would’ve thought to ask that question until this week. Footage shot by the Associated Press showed Macron being aggressively shoved in the face by his wife, Brigitte, as the pair prepared to disembark from their plane in Hanoi.

You can clearly see that she places both hands on her husband’s face and gives it a proper shove. It’s actually quite confronting, though brief.

The footage is everywhere online and you can see Macron is whacked in the face with decent force, enough for him to momentarily stumble backwards. He looks shocked. Who wouldn’t look shocked after their missus belted them one? He wasn’t laughing, there was no hint of jouer in Macron’s demeanour. If I had to translate that expression, it would be … WTAF Brigitte!!?

What we don’t see is Brigitte Macron. Her facial expression at the moment of impact. Her body language. The angle at which the footage was filmed doesn’t show it. But consider the obvious, the blatantly obvious. If the roles were reversed, there would, rightly, have been an international outcry. A man shoving a woman in the face so forcefully that she stumbles backward in shock? Mon Dieu, non!

The response to this imbroglio was, shall we say, typically French. The Macron camp initially denied the footage was real. It’s a fake! Then, shortly after, a spokesman admitted the vision was in fact legitimate and the incident had occurred.

It gets better.

A spokesman for the French president told the world’s media that what we saw was a private moment between a loving couple. They were “decompressing”. Most couples would get a massage or something or maybe go for a walk and chat.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron.

Just when you think it can’t get any more ridiculous, et voila..!

“It was a moment of togetherness!” the spokesman said. Nothing says togetherness like gently roughing up your other half, I suppose.

Macron’s office and indeed the President himself lashed out against what they called “conspiracy theories”. Let me be very clear. This footage shows Macron being shoved in the face by his wife; to say otherwise is not a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory is, for example, that Brigitte Macron was born a man. This one’s a doozy and is peddled primarily by crackpots like Candace Owens.

Candace Owens

Jokes at the expense of the French aside – and there are many good ones – there is an abhorrent double standard here. A woman gets hit in the face and it’s game over. As it bloody should be. A man? Calm down, they’re just showing the world how close they are. They’re just chillin’. What you could also argue is they’re modelling behaviour where violence and aggression is totally fine depending on who is dishing it out and who is receiving it.

I thought I’d find out what the DV rates are in France, you know, for fun. In November last year, a French government report found that domestic violence cases in that country doubled between 2016 and 2023. Gosh! A country with so much togetherness!

While women remain the overwhelming cohort of victims, this must not and should not diminish the cases in which men are subject to the same behaviour.

Either way, what was caught on camera, and the subsequent response from the Macron camp, sends an appalling message about mutual respect, about the delicate subject of domestic violence and about leadership. The price of leadership is accountability and this is a big fat fail on that metric.

Ultimately, what goes on inside the Macron marriage is for them to know, we only see what they want us to see. Or, on the odd occasion like this week, what they wish we never did.