#MeToo Movement Analyzed Through the Balance Theorem and Game Theory
In 2017, a 160 character tweet launched a social revolution around the world by exponentially increasing awareness about the prevalence of sexual assault in contemporary society. American actress Alyssa Milano launched this revolution with the following tweet: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet,” which ultimately garnered 1.7 million retweets worldwide. Since then, the hashtag has been used over 19 million times on Twitter, as other sexual assault survivors share their stories on this online forum which has generated a social network of survivors. This social network was not created through conventional means, rather, it can better be defined as being a network of acknowledgement as edges linked several sexual assault survivors around the world to each other through their public disclosure of their personal assault stories. Tarana Burke, the founder of the “Me Too” movement describes the formation of this social network: “One of the worst things about experiencing sexual trauma is feeling like you’re all alone…Instead, when people say, ‘This happened to me too, I understand you,’ a connection happens.” In terms of social networks, the connection that Burke describes is the formation of an edge between 2 nodes — even though the nodes may have never met each other in person. By reading each other’s experiences, empathizing with each other, and communicating these emotions online, an entirely virtual social network of survivors has formed.
With the formation of this network came the formation of an enemy network, in which the assaulters who were identified through survivor’s speaking up retaliated with their own narrative. This narrative consisted of denying “Me Too” allegations by calling it a scam due to the rapid spread and growth of survivors’ stories from this tweet. Thus, the “#MeToo” network structure is representative of the balance theorem. The balance theorem holds that an entire network can be divided into 2 groups, X and Y, such that everyone in X has positive relations with everyone else in X, everyone in Y has positive relations with everyone else in Y, and everyone X is enemies with everyone in Y. In the #MeToo network, everyone who is a survivor supports each other and empathizes with their experiences (and thus they all have positive relations with each other) due to the collective online expression of their stories, while they all have negative relations with their assaulters. Likewise, in context of their stance on the #MeToo narrative, the assaulters have positive relations with each other as they support each other as a collective “we” in denying survivors’ stories and generating a rebuttal narrative by claiming #MeToo is a scam. Thus, on a macro scale, the #MeToo network is balanced, which illustrates the extreme polarization between the two ends of the contemporary sexual assault narrative. This polarization exemplifies why assault and the stigmas associated with survivors sharing their stories perpetuate even in a modern society: because the network of survivors cannot get through to the network of assaulters who resist allegations due to a lack of positive edges between the 2 groups in this network that foster communication.
Before the hashtag was popularized and the #MeToo network of acknowledgement was created, it was rare for survivors to share their stories. Perhaps it was survivors’ fears of people not believing them, or the lack of a social network to support their beliefs, but survivors sharing their stories was rare. Professors Ing-Haw Cheng and Hsiaw of Dartmouth College and Brandeis University describe the sexual assault survivors’ thought process with regards to speaking up about their stories (before #MeToo was launched) in terms of game theory. Here, any one player’s uncertainty regarding if other players will speak up about their story, especially if it is a female in a male-dominated workplace, results in every player (or survivor) being less likely to speak up. This uncertainty generates a vicious cycle for the players, as the uncertainty results in fewer people speaking up, simply because they don’t think the other players will speak up. Thus, the reality becomes that fewer players end up sharing their stories simply because of an unspoken doubt that all the players share. In a game with both the harasser and the survivor, the payoff matrix works out as such:
If the harasser assaults a victim and the victim does not share their story, the harasser wins the game (as they achieve their desires without having to face the consequences) and the victim has a negative payoff of being taken advantage of and facing the trauma that follows this experience. On the other hand, if the victim chooses to tell their story, the harasser then has 2 choices: admit guilt or feign innocence. If the harasser admits guilt, they lose the game as they must face the consequences for their actions for the remainder of their lives, while the victim still loses (with less of a negative payoff than if they did not speak up because now they can hope for justice) as they still face the trauma sparked by this event for the remainder of their lives. In most circumstances, the harasser is male and the victim is female, which illustrates how gender roles are perceived in sexual assault dynamics viewed as a game.
#MeToo changed the aforementioned narrative in which few female survivors speak up about their experiences as millions of survivors shared their stories in this moment. By sharing their stories, survivors ultimately created a social network characterized by acknowledgement and empathy that reverses the vicious cycle of dwindling numbers reporting their harassment and instead creates a new cycle — one that encourages and empowers players to speak up.
https://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/news/articles/game-theory-and-the-metoo-movement
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0894439319864882
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9153834