Farewell Mule - and welcome to WHAT ABOUT WOMEN

News of a name change and a celebratory special offer!

Hi everyone! I’ve been thinking about changing the name of my substack for a while and yesterday I decided to take the plunge!

Many of you don’t even know why I’ve called it The Mule for the last couple of years or so - it’s because, when I first started blogging in 2010, my blog was called The Mule. Why? Because it was a daft nickname my partner (stubborn, headstrong, will carry bags up hills for a decent carrot) had for me and I just thought it was a fun name for a publication.

So, having experimented with a few other iterations, this substack became The Mule, too, for a while.

But recently, in particular because I’ve been featured a couple of times in the Substack charts, I’ve wondered if someone finding my publication there or elsewhere on the substack app would have the faintest clue what I write about from the title The Mule! Probably not!

Recently when I was writing the introduction to Ultra Processed Women I had an epiphany - I realised that everything I think about and write about comes down to just one question:

But what about women?

In fact, that’s the title of the introduction to that book!

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Then, in the past fortnight since the Supreme Court judgment, I’ve been thinking about the question again, as people have seemed to be falling over themselves with concern about how the judgment will affect trans identifying males, whilst completely ignoring the huge impact of gender self ID on biological females.

What about women?

You can see how this question is largely absent from many people’s minds when you look at, to name just one example of many, this recent tweet from Owen Jones, where he is completely blind to the fact that he is describing the exact situation for women if they cannot be sure of single sex spaces.

But it’s not just the Owen’s of this world, even BBC Women’s Hour felt the need to prioritise male people when they interviewed Susan Smith of For Women Scotland, as I wrote about here:

So WHAT ABOUT WOMEN seemed the perfect name for my space here on substack, not just to summarise what I’m about, but also to plant that phrase in people’s minds in the hopes it will spring more often to the front of the collective brain!

Please rest assured that, apart from the name, nothing fundamental about this substack will change. There may be a few more tweaks to come in the look and feel of it, but you can still expect the same regular content from me that you have become used to.

• Regular articles sent out around Tues / Weds each week

• The Word is Woman each Friday

• The Nosebag each Sunday (I might keep that name in memory of the old Mule, RIP!)

• Writing for Change group via zoom each month

• One off events (like my next book launch!), workshops, and a Salon (in the planning stages)

• Subscriber only chats in the app

Special celebratory offer!

To celebrate this step forward for my substack, I’d like to offer you all 50% off annual subscriptions for the next year.

That’s just £27.50 for a whole year’s sub, instead of £55! Just £2.29 a month.

If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, now is the time to do so!

This offer is brief, and ends on May 1st. Just 48 hours from now.

Paid subscriptions are really important to me, and I’m extremely grateful for them. They help keep me writing in this brilliant place, which is advert free, uncensored and where I can be my own boss (very important to headstrong Mules!).

So thank you so much for supporting me in this wonderful part of the internet, and whatever you are doing today, don’t forget to ask:

WHAT ABOUT WOMEN?

With love, Milli x