Being a Woman Feels Heavy This Week
Something is happening among women. The Cornell 7 didn't create it. But they may have struck a match dangerously close to something that's been simmering for a very long time.
“Being a woman feels heavy this week.”
I saw those words on Threads and knew exactly what she meant. Every woman with a smartphone an at least one social media account knew what she meant.
It does feel heavy. Women have been carrying the weight of this world for longer than any of us have been alive, but there is something different about the weight this week. Women aren't just angry. They're fucking raging, and before somebody rushes in to tell us that anger isn't productive, becoming, healthy, feminine or whatever other pretty little cage we're supposed to climb back into, perhaps everyone should pay attention to what women are actually doing with it.
They are talking. Reporting. Calling. Emailing. Finding documents. Contacting journalists and institutions. Crossing platforms and languages. Comparing notes. Refusing to let stories disappear simply because the news cycle gets bored.
They are finding each other.
The Cornell 7 has become one flashpoint. Jane Doe, a former Cornell University student, says seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity drugged and gang raped her in October 2024. Her civil lawsuit describes her becoming incapacitated while sexual acts continued and includes an image of a fraternity Snapchat group chat from that night. Cornell's own disciplinary process later resulted in suspensions and expulsions, essays, and the fraternity chapter was closed. This week, the Tompkins County district attorney reopened the criminal investigation and announced that the case would be presented to a grand jury. Jane Doe's attorney says the original investigation failed to adequately pursue her account and available evidence; the district attorney disputes that characterization, and attorneys for some of the men named have denied wrongdoing.
Bless their hearts.
The briefing is everywhere, and I am not here to retell it. This morning, I'm watching women rally the FAFO movement.
Women who have never met are acting like supportive besties who knew each other in another lifetime. One finds something and another carries it farther. Women are calling. Women are emailing. Women are demanding answers. Women are contacting news organizations and employers. The conversation has crossed borders and reached Korean online communities who have taken note and done their own accountability check. Good for them, and more of this, please. Somewhere in the middle of all this, writer and satirist Toby Morton joined the assignment and created TheCornell7.org to help keep public attention on the case after the inevitable churn of the news cycle. Great! I’m not going to start tossing around the word “ally.” I’m not that gal. It should be obvious as a human to do things that are supportive of humanity. Kind of like common sense, but you know how that goes. I’m also not refusing Morton’s assistance here. It is needed. I respect that.
There is no headquarters directing these women. No president assigning duties. No institution gave anyone permission to participate. Thousands of women simply recognized something in one another and moved. That matters to me because I have been talking about this shift for years. I have watched women getting closer and closer to a boiling point, and I've wondered what would happen when enough of us finally reached it.
Maybe, we are already there. I sure hope so, but let's move along because I found something else this morning that deserves attention.
Another Threads post asked a simple question: “You wake up tomorrow and there are only women left in the world. What's the first thing you do?”
Then I started reading the replies:
“Walk my dog with headphones on.”
“Walk alone late at night without a care in the world.”
“Walk around at night alone.”
“Go for a walk at night.”
“Go on a midnight walk.”
“Take a walk with both headphones in.”
“Go camping alone.”
“Travel alone.”
“Go to a bar alone.”
“Get drunk and not worry about who is watching.”
“Sleep for a week.”
“Sleep with the windows open.”
“Dance naked under the moon.”
“Plant flowers everywhere.”
“Plant flowers and food forests everywhere.”
“Lay in the grass.”
“Go swimming at night.”
“Wear whatever I want.”
“Breathe a sigh of relief.”
When women were handed an imaginary world without men, they weren't fantasizing about taking over the planet. They were reimagining a world they could exist in peacefully. In safety. Relaxing. With nervous systems based in thriving, not constant survival mode.
Sit with that.
I have been saying for years that I believe women are approaching a fundamental shift in the way we structure our lives. More women choosing one another’s companionship. Buying homes. Building businesses. Creating communities. Learning skills our mothers and grandmothers were taught required a husband, father or some other man standing nearby. Eventually, I believe more women will build entire lives in which men simply aren't the organizing principle.
That doesn't mean women hate men. I don't hate men. This isn't about hating anyone. Wanting a man and needing a man for your life to function are two entirely different things, and more women are discovering the difference. It took me over forty years to figure this out.
We can earn, own, build, learn, leave and stay. We can find community outside romantic partnership. We can ask other women for help. We can fix the goddamn thing ourselves or learn how. A healthy relationship can enrich an already whole life rather than serve as its scaffolding. Every time women are told the patriarchy is dying, however, it seems to find a fresh reserve of audacity, and every fresh reserve pushes more women toward a much more disruptive question: What if we stop participating?
What if we stop asking permission altogether?
Not permission to harm. Men have cornered the market on that one. Women have had quite enough experience with what happens when power decides harm is its privilege. I'm talking about the permission women have been trained to seek before trusting ourselves: permission to be angry, to leave, to say something happened, to make somebody uncomfortable by saying it out loud, to demand an answer, to believe another woman, to question an institution and to choose ourselves without first proving that somebody else deserves to lose.
That permission.
Maybe that's the part of the Age of Aquarius conversation we've made far too pretty. For years we've heard about an age of peace, enlightenment, community and feminine energy, as though humanity would wake up one morning, burn some sage and collectively decide to evolve.
Have you met humans?
With all beginnings, there is destruction. Transformation requires something old to give way, and the transformations that alter a person's life at the core rarely arrive politely. Sometimes something has to crack hard enough that staying the same becomes more painful than changing. Rage can come before healing. Shattering can come before rebuilding. The darkness can arrive before enlightenment, and apparently there can be a whole lot of fucking Lilith before we get anywhere near peace.
I love the Lilith archetype for this moment because underneath all the trendy dark-feminine imagery is something much more interesting: refusal. I will not participate under those terms. That doesn't sound particularly mystical to me right now. It sounds like my feed.
Women who have spent years quietly shoving things down are speaking. Women who were taught not to make trouble are making very useful trouble. Women who once thought they were alone are discovering thousands of other women saying, Me too. I saw it too. I felt that too. I thought I was the only one.
For centuries, isolation and dependence have been powerful ways of restricting women's agency. Women were expected to remain in homes while men occupied public life, controlled property, handled money, made laws and performed the “important” work. Marriage itself has been used across cultures as an economic, political and social contract in which women had remarkably little say. It is 2026! Even now, females are forced and marriages arranged without meaningful consent.
Think about the reversal happening in our hands.
The internet didn't simply connect women. Jane Doe was a bat signal. It stirred something ancient, feral and maternal in us all.
A woman can speak from Texas and another woman in Seoul can hear her. A document can cross an ocean before an institution finishes drafting its statement. A woman who was told what happened to her was an isolated incident can discover ten thousand other women saying, No. Me too.
Isolation once kept women apart.
Connection ruins that arrangement.
Call it Aquarius. Call it sociology. Call it network theory. Call it the internet finally being useful for something besides selling us shit we don't need. I call it worth paying attention to.
As for rage? It isn't the destination. I don't want women out there spending the next generation furious at men. That's still organizing our lives around men. I wish every woman could see rage as a tool, use it when she needs it, and then decide what she wants to build when the rage has burned through the disgust and fear.
Perhaps the future isn't millions of women swearing off men. Maybe it's subtler and much more powerful. I wish for women to know they can leave, so they stay where they are loved well. For women to know they can support themselves, so money loses some of its ability to purchase their silence. For women to know other women will stand beside them, so isolation loses some of its power. More importantly, for women to know their voices matter, so they stop waiting for somebody to hand them a microphone.
And, perhaps we women simply demand men who understand our freedom is not their punishment. Men do not have to dominate us to matter to us. Men get to be chosen instead of required, and this has already proven to be a hard pill for many men to swallow.
Otherwise, would there even be a Cornell 7?
My most important take away from my morning scrolls is that Jane Doe, despite everything, found her voice. Her strength. Her rage. There is something potently inspiring about that.
My wish for you, the women of the world, is this: if you've recently found your voice, fight like hell to keep it. If you've used it even though your hands were shaking, use it again. If you've finally said no, don't rush to soften it because somebody looked uncomfortable, and definitely do not apologize for using it. If you're watching other women speak and thinking, I could never do that, never say never. The more you exercise speaking up, the more confident you will become using your voice.
And if you're tired, rest.
Your sisters of the internet world have got you.
Then... get back up.
I don't think the heaviness women are feeling right now means we're losing. On the contrary. I think the world is about to find out it has awakened a sleeping giant with the networking speed of a supercomputer.
There is an old Buddhist story about a monk who asks how heavy a glass of water is. Its absolute weight doesn't really matter. Hold it for a minute and it's nothing. Hold it for hours and your arm begins to ache. Carry it all day and eventually you can't feel your hand. The lesson is simple: sometimes the weight isn't the problem. It's how long we've been carrying it.
Women naturally carry heavy things. We carry life into the world. We carry children, families, work, grief, memories, expectations and far too often the burdens of societies that were never designed around our freedom. Mother Nature knew women could carry the heavy things. She literally created us to hold life.
Perhaps what I'm seeing isn't women deciding they can't carry anymore.
I think women are deciding what is worth carrying, and what gets put the fuck down.
It isn't quiet. It isn't perfect.
And, none of us are asking permission anymore about what we should have to carry.
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