When only the Daily Mail will tell the truth.
Dancing on stage in knee-high boots, PVC underwear and posing provocatively with a riding crop, Paula Southin, a transgender activist, performs an erotic routine using the stage name Violette Hue in a lewd online video.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Southin, who was born a man, is also a former Girl Guide leader and member of a key committee tasked with helping shape the future of the 116-year-old movement.
A future of performing erotic routines in underwear and riding boots. What other kind of future could any girl want? What else are female people for?
Astonishingly, the 58-year-old amateur burlesque performer was one of at least four trans activists who were asked by Girlguiding – previously The Girl Guides Association – to explore opportunities for trans girls and trans women to be ‘supported’ by the organisation.
No doubt they can put on shows in underwear and riding boots – all those nice Girl Guides will be just delighted, right?
Girlguiding was plunged into turmoil by the landmark legal ruling that the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ relate to biological sex and that women-only spaces should be protected.
In response, the Guides announced in December that membership would be ‘restricted to girls and young women’, which it described as a ‘difficult decision’. All remaining trans people must leave the organisation by September.
Insiders say the move has split the organisation, with powerful voices expressing pro-trans views behind the scenes and activists campaigning to overturn the ban. Girlguiding itself launched a consultation last year involving around 500 people to explore how it can help trans girls and trans women, while insisting it was not attempting to reverse the ban.
The consultation was overseen by a panel of 16, including burlesque performer Southin, which met seven times between January and March. It discussed ideas for connecting with trans people, including ‘how possible, lawful, and inclusive these ideas would be’.
But it’s not Trans Guides, it’s Girl Guides. Why can’t it just stay Girl Guides? Trans people can set up a Trans Guides, and girls can continue to have Girl Guides. Why does it have to be that Girl Guides is turned into Girl plus Trans Guides?
But bizarre performances plus lewd pictures, comments and videos posted online has raised questions over whether Southin is appropriate for the role – although there is no suggestion the activist is guilty of any wrongdoing.
One post featured an image of two children’s teddy bears in bondage gear, while others showed Southin in a red basque and suspenders, a pink PVC dress and making jokes about male genitals. In one video posted on Instagram in 2024, Southin – a self-described ‘steam punk’ performer – provocatively licks a riding crop and twirls it to the rhythm of Soft Cell’s Tainted Love.
Is Girl Guides morphing into Sex Worker of Tomorrow Guides? Couldn’t they let Girl Guides stay Girl Guides and set up their own Sex Worker Guides?
Helen Joyce, of sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, said: ‘Any honest consideration of whether Paula Southin is fit to be in a position of authority within Girlguiding, given these provocative materials, has to start from the fact Southin is male, not female.
Those responsible for girls’ safety must not be hampered by political correctness: they need to be clear-eyed about male sexuality, including male paraphilias such as erotic cross-dressing.’
In other words “Paula” isn’t there for quite the same reasons your boring old female Girl Guides adults.
Details of Southin’s role on the panel come as whistleblowers describe an atmosphere of intimidation from pro-trans colleagues at Girlguiding’s London headquarters, which is just round the corner from Buckingham Palace.
One ex-employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said she realised shortly after joining that ‘gender-critical’ views – the belief that there are two biological sexes and that sex cannot be changed – were ‘simply not welcome’. She said Girlguiding’s ‘head of girl experience’, Gemma Benton, believed that boys and men who identify as female should remain within the organisation, despite the Supreme Court ruling.
…
The whistleblower said she felt unable to express her views at work. ‘I just didn’t feel psychologically safe in that environment,’ she said. ‘I had never experienced any organisation like it before.’
She recalls a junior manager effectively telling staff unhappy with the organisation’s approach to trans inclusion: ‘You’ve all got to get on board or get out.’
‘No one challenged it,’ the former employee said. A second whistleblower, who still works for Girlguiding said: ‘It is essentially taken as a given within Girlguiding that trans women are women, so any discussion of biological reality is avoided. You simply wouldn’t test the water, as there would be no coming back from it.’
And yet, if biological reality didn’t matter, there would be no need for feminism or for girls’ organizations. If boys didn’t see girls as lesser, inferior, subordinate, weak, then there would just be Guides. But that’s not the world we live in.
Leave a Reply