Writing to Change Hearts and Minds

By Cathy Fleischer

When I was 16, I wrote an opinion piece for my high school newspaper—a piece inspired by the passion I felt when a fellow student, a young woman who was also 16, was raked over the coals by other students and community members when she dared to call out her male boss over his behavior toward her. She must have asked for it, they said.  He’s an important person in the community.  It must have been her fault.  Even then, I knew their responses were just wrong.  And so I wrote, carefully choosing each word in hopes that others would read my piece and shift their thinking about sexual harassment.  (This was, by the way, in 1972—long before the Me Too Movement—a time when these issues were swept under the rug.) I remember feeling such energy and such commitment to writing this piece, far more than I had ever felt for a school assignment or the angsty poetry I kept in my locked and secreted journal.  This piece mattered to me because I was angry at the injustice she had experienced and purposeful in my intent to change minds. I wanted people to rethink the things they had said about this young woman and to reconsider their own beliefs.

When the piece was published, so many people reached out to share their own secret outrage, their own stories, and their reflections on what I had said.  And they reached out to her to apologize and to support. For the first time, I came to understand that words really do matter. And when we write—when we write with passion and purpose--we can change minds and hearts.