GLR January-February 2026

the choice was intended as a provocation—of course it got a rise out of the right-wing blogosphere, which took it as further evidence of moral chaos, the End of Days, etc.—but perhaps there’s an underlying message for our times. Underpinning the current reactionary regime is a resurgence of heterosexual men that seems like a Reconquista, with women and LGBT people among those running for cover. People ’s readers and creators are largely women, and it may just be that for this readership straight men in general just don’t seem quite as hot as they used to. What’s counterintuitive about the choice of a gay man is that “the sexiest man” is meant to turn on some kind of col lective sexual fantasy that a gay man is unlikely to satisfy. Nev ertheless, maybe that sense of longing and frustration is precisely the mood that’s being captured. It Wasn’t a Bitch Slap In a story that began to simmer last sum mer, what caught our eye, and everyone’s, was the report that France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, had “bitch-slapped” a

woman for claiming that she (Macron) was actually a man in deep disguise. It turns out the phrase was being used metaphor ically to refer to a lawsuit that Mme Macron had filed against one Candace Owens, an American who’d been making this spurious claim on her podcast. Owens, a MAGA Republican and conspiracy fabulist with a following, had already been dis credited for promulgating patently false anti-Semitic myths. For whatever reason, Owens’ allegations really got under Madame’s skin—maybe it was the claim that the First Lady was really her brother Jean-Michel disguised as a women—so she sued for libel. Long story short: she prevailed in court, and Ms. Owens was ordered to pay €13,500 (about $15,000) in damages. The defense’s argument was not helped by Jean Michel’s presence in court, though the allegation was always an absurdity. Why it was ever invented is anyone’s guess— perhaps in some tortuous way an attempt to take the focus off Trump’s troubles with Epstein while attacking both transgen der people and France’s liberal prime minister.

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