A right-wing hoaxer has falsely claimed that former US president Barack Obama’s daughter Malia Obama has come out as trans – with absolutely zero evidence.
After years of far-right conspiracy theorists falsely claiming former US first lady Michelle Obama is actually a trans woman, social media trolls have apparently moved on to a new hoax: namely that her 26-year-old daughter Malia has ‘transitioned’.
“As if the Obama family didn’t have enough weirdness, Malia has announced that she will transition to ‘Maleek’, a ‘non-binary person’, and she plans to marry longtime friend Joey Barron, who is now a woman named Jan,” an X user masquerading as Donald Trump’s son Barron posted on Wednesday (7 May), with absolutely no evidence to support the claim.
Nevertheless, the X post went viral, and received over 2,500 retweets. At the time of writing it has been viewed 232,000 times.
Malia Obama has not publicly made any statements about her gender or sexuality.
Michelle Obama has faced years of transphobic jokes and conspiracy theories from people claiming she is trans or looks “masculine”, with Elon Musk’s father Errol Musk spreading the hoax as recently as February, claiming it is “common knowledge” that she is a “man”.
Research has found that Black women are often targeted with racist and transphobic tropes about masculinity, while Black trans women are disproportionally affected by transphobic violence. Hoaxes like this, therefore, not only imply that being trans is something negative, but also feeds into racist stereotypes.
More positively, while Malia has not spoken about her sexuality publicly, she has had influence on her father’s views on the LGBTQ+ community.
Barack Obama previously thanked his daughters, Malia and Sasha, for changing his views on same-sex marriage. Obama was president when same-sex marriage was legalised across the US in 2015, praising the move by claiming “love is love”, and adding: “When all Americans are treated as equal we are all more free.”
The former president claimed in 2016: “I have to confess my children generally had an impact on me,” explaining that he had previously thought it was unnecessary to “label” a same-sex union as marriage, as same-sex civil partners had similar legal rights.
He added that he had realised, with the encouragement of Malia and Sasha, then teenagers, that “it was not simply about legal rights but about a sense of stigma”.
“If you’re calling it something different it means that somehow it means less in the eyes of society,” he added.
The first sitting president to support same-sex marriage, Obama was also the first to mention gay rights or the word “gay” in an inaugural address. He was also the first president to reference transgender people in a speech, condemning the “persecution of women, or religious minorities, or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender” in 2016.
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