Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau announced on Wednesday that he’s separating from his wife Sophie. As one of the very few conventionally attractive world leaders currently in power, this news attracted a lot of attention.
Less predictably, it also inspired an influx of memes about Trudeau supposedly having an affair with French president Emmanuel Macron.
One of the most popular posts in this subgenre came from crypto influencer Matt Wallace, who posts a lot of right-wing content and referred to Trudeau as a “low-T soy boy” in an earlier tweet.
Other seemingly right-wing accounts shared similar “rumors” and photos, joking that Trudeau and Macron are having an affair.
While there are real fandom subcultures where people write romantic fanfic about politicians, that’s not what’s happening here. Nor does anyone seriously believe Trudeau is divorcing his wife for Macron, despite previous unfounded conspiracy theories that Macron is secretly gay.
Based on the kind of posts we’re seeing here, this is just old-fashioned homophobic humor. Some people see Trudeau and Macron as insufficiently masculine, making them a target for gay jokes. The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site, announced Trudeau’s divorce with the headline, “Trudeau’s Divorce Leaves Nation In Shock That He Was Married To A Woman.”
But while Trudeau/Macron jokes fold into familiar types of manosphere humor, this kind of meme isn’t a wholly right-wing phenomenon. Back in the 2010s, we saw some pretty similar jokes aimed at Putin and Trump.
