Every Monday, Susan, Robyn and I get together to talk about what's up for us, and what we think would be worth writing about, not just for us but for the women in our circle. This week we had a couple of good ideas going.

Then I opened my phone.

My feeds were full of the Cornell story. If you've missed it, the short version is that a former student has filed a lawsuit alleging she was drugged and assaulted by fraternity members in 2024, and the district attorney has now reopened the case for a grand jury to review. A lot is still being sorted out, and I'm not going to try to sort it out here. That belongs to the courts, and to her.

One note before I go further. If this story is stirring something up for you, please be gentle with yourself as you read, or skip this one entirely. That's allowed. There's a resource at the bottom.

What I Felt Scrolling Through the Outrage

What I noticed while scrolling was how fast the posts stacked up: anger, disgust, demands, sarcasm. And honestly? I felt all of it too. The anger isn't wrong. Something went badly wrong for a young woman, and wanting accountability is a healthy response.

By about the tenth post, though, I noticed something else. I felt heavier, not clearer. I started wondering what all this outrage actually does. I wasn't asking whether it's justified, because it often is. I was asking what it does.

Changing Minds vs. Changing Hearts

Here's the question I keep coming back to: how do we change not just minds, but hearts?

It isn't a new question for me. It comes from my coach, the same wise woman I wrote quoted last week. She's old enough to have been marching and protesting in the '60s and '70s, when Roe v. Wade was first making its way through the courts. She fought for women's right to decide what happens to their own bodies, and she went to jail for it.

When Roe was overturned, I asked her what that was like for her, watching so much of that work and sacrifice get reversed.

She said, "We fought to change minds but we missed changing hearts."

When she said it to me the trueness of it REALLY landed for me. I used to teach in my own course that behavioral reinforcement only brings about short term change.

Whatever any of us believes about that particular issue, I think her point reaches past any single law. Winning the argument, even winning in court, isn't the same as winning people over.

Laws, consequences and even public shame can change minds. They can change behavior. They tell people where the line is and what happens if they cross it. We need that, and I want to be clear that I believe that accountability isn't optional.

But I don't think a law has ever made anyone care. A punishment can teach someone to fear getting caught without ever teaching them to see the person in front of them. If we want change that lasts, we need that kind of seeing.

Why Shame Backfires: Shame vs. Guilt

Psychologist June Tangney has spent years studying the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt says, "I did something bad." Shame says, "I am bad." Her research finds that guilt is more likely to move people toward making amends, while shame tends to make people defensive, want to hide, or blame someone else.

That resonated for me. So much of what flies around online is shame, and I get why. It can feel good for a minute. But shame tends to harden people rather than open them, and a hardened heart doesn't change.

What Research Says Actually Changes Hearts

Listening, Not Arguing

Here's the part that gives me hope.

Political scientists David Broockman and Joshua Kalla studied door-to-door conversations about prejudice. They found that a single conversation of about ten minutes, in which the canvasser listened and invited the other person to take someone else's perspective, reduced prejudice for at least three months. The canvassers didn't argue. They asked sincere questions, listened, and sometimes asked the person to remember a time they had been treated unfairly for being different.

It wasn't a debate. It was a conversation. Someone felt heard, and then they could hear.

When Peers Set the Standard

The second finding is even closer to home. A five-year study of the Green Dot program in 26 Kentucky high schools trained students, including popular students other kids looked up to, to recognize risky situations and step in. By years three and four, sexual violence perpetration was lower in those schools than in schools without the program.

That change didn't come from the top down. It came from peers deciding together what they would and wouldn't stand for.

Where Changing Hearts Starts for Women Like Us

So what does that mean for women like us, who aren't prosecutors or university presidents?

I think it means we have more influence than we give ourselves credit for. We raise sons and daughters. We're aunties, grandmothers, teachers, coaches, bosses and friends. We're in the kitchens, group chats and carpools where culture actually gets made. Hearts change in those small rooms long before anything changes in a courtroom.

It might ask something of us, too: staying in the conversation when it gets uncomfortable, asking a question before we reach for the share button, and listening long enough to the teenager, the brother or the neighbor who sees it differently to find out what's really going on in there.

I'm not saying we swallow or paper over our anger. I'm saying anger can be the fuel, and it's worth asking where we point it.

My coaches words, and this week, have me wanting to look more closely at something I've been curious about for a long time: what happens when a community is organized around relationship and care from the start? Over the coming weeks, we're going to explore matriarchy — what it is, what it isn't, and what it might teach us about changing hearts.

Try This Week: From Shame to Curiosity

This week, notice one moment when you reach for shame. It might be pointed outward, like scrolling past a post and thinking, "What is wrong with people?" It might be pointed inward, like "I should have known better." Most of us do both more often than we realize.

When you catch it, pause and simply name it: "That's shame."

Then try a different question. Instead of "What's wrong with them?" or "What's wrong with me?" ask "What might be going on here?" or "What would actually help?"

Notice what shifts, in your body, in your thinking, or in what you do next.

This isn't about excusing harm, and it isn't about letting yourself off the hook either. Accountability still matters. Curiosity is simply where change has room to start, in them and in us.

If this story has brought up something painful, you don't have to hold it alone.

RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or online.rainn.org.

Sources

Broockman, D., & Kalla, J. (2016). Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing. Science, 352(6282), 220–224.

Coker, A. L., Bush, H. M., et al. (2017). RCT testing bystander effectiveness to reduce violence. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 52(5), 566–578.

Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345–372.

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