The #metoo movement as a desire path

We find ourselves in the midst of the Harvey Weinstein trial, stemming from dozens of allegations of sexual misconduct and ultimately producing five counts of criminal sexual abuse. For years, these women, and many more survivors, silently harbored these criminal acts taken against them. That is, until October 2017 opened a floodgate with the viral hashtag #MeToo – two words that began a remarkable, yet harrowing, movement. 

On October 19, 2017, Chicago Tribune published an article written by Abby Ohlheiser discussing how “#MeToo, the viral hashtag, seemed to gain traction as if by magic. It appeared, it spread, it brought new meaning to an important issue, and in a week, it will no longer be news.”  This was how Twitter hashtags demanding social change usually ended (a notable further exception being #blacklivesmatter).  So, why else would this movement be any different? Even Tarana Burke, the original coiner of the term “me too,” predicted that this hashtag would simply give people transient “hope and inspiration” and wouldn’t gain traction through measurable action off Twitter. The world saw this in 2014 with the viral but surface enthusiasm shown in the ASL Ice Bucket Challenge.

At the time, neither #metoo’s architect Tarana Burke nor Chicago Tribune contributor Abby Ohlheiser could fathom this longstanding, continuously growing movement that is changing laws and taking down predatory men two and a half years later. 

#MeToo showed that this incredibly isolating, violating, and often most private event of people’s life stories was an experience shared by millions. Statistics from the Pew Research Center indicate that half a million people replied to the original #MeToo tweet within 24 hours; over 1.7 million tweets came out within 45 days. On Facebook, 45% of American users had a friend who posted #MeToo – coming from a more diverse assortment of communities than any viral hashtag ever before, according to a Bustle article by JR Thorpe. In the first 24 hours, twelve million posts and comments from 85 countries revolved around this topic. Fast forward one year later – and Pew’s research found that the hashtag #MeToo had been used more than 19 million times on Twitter. Twitter users were naming their abusers in the hopes of destroying their careers so they couldn’t take advantage of anyone else ever again. This movement – still going on today – started as a viral digital trend, but its effects have been acute and long-lasting. 

Now, let me introduce you to the idea of a “desire path.” This is the type of path that develops across the grass in Mudd Field because inefficient paved walkways don’t account for running to class from the DUC to Bauer.  Wikipedia defines it as the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination.  99% Invisible writer, Kurt Kohlstedt, explains that “informal ‘desire paths’ can form with as few as fifteen traversals of an unpaved route, creating spontaneous new trails shaped by pedestrians effectively voting with their feet.” This voting could indicate that the official path isn’t the quickest or most pleasant route; or that regional superstitions keep people from following it. In Europe and the Middle East, semi-subterranean routes have formed over hundreds or even thousands of years with individual footfalls pushing down earth ever so slightly as to sink a frequented trail into the ground.

In this age of social media, desire paths having similarly deep impact can develop without footfall and over the course of a single night. A a tweet or hashtag – like #MeToo – going viral follows the same trajectory that causes oft-used stone staircases to have dips in the middle from centuries of footfalls. This is a result of rational choice theory – the idea that individual choices made by discrete individuals amass to define societal behavior. 

Sometimes people try to block desire paths (think: the fences around Mudd Field in the spring) but often these interventions result in additional, replacement desire paths (think: the well-worn paths around the fences on Mudd Field in the spring). This blockage of desire paths is often a safety intervention – keeping pedestrians within security camera coverage or making sure footpaths in state forests are staying on stable ground. Other times, administrators validate desire paths. In Finland, city planners take note of the lines people’s footfalls make after the first snow, when formal paths are not visible, to make Finnish parks more responsive to pedestrian behavior. Michigan State University, Virginia Tech, UC Berkeley, and even Central Park in Manhattan paved their walking paths based on desire paths. In fact, the hashtag #MeToo could not have existed without an earlier virtual desire path: as a 2014 podcast episode of 99 Percent Invisible explains, hashtags and @-signs were incorporated officially in 2007 only after Twitter saw its user community organically using them. 

Now, the hashtag is an example of what scholar Laura Nichols calls a “social desire path” – a trend that emerges when formal structures fall short of individual or group needs. Similar to physical desire paths, people are often neither consciously nor collectively protesting. Rather they organically fulfill their personal needs in a patterned way that is then repeated by others. This fulfillment of needs is on a micro level: individuals analyze the opportunities available to them and, finding them inadequate, follow an available alternative. Nichols identifies an additional characteristic shared by all social desire paths: they often conflict formal structures in a way that causes issues for the continuation of the status quo. The continuation of the status quo in this situation was the continued acceptance that sexual harassment and other abuses were acceptable and expected in the workplace. 

So, how did #MeToo’s social desire path begin? It was in 2006, when Tarana Burke coined the phrase “Me Too” as a way to help women of color who had survived sexual violence. It didn’t go viral immediately, but the first footsteps had now forged the path. In 2014, #yesallwomen began the conversation between women about their experiences with sexism and sexual harassment, as explained by a 2017 CBS news article. At the time, Twitter had fewer users, and still the hashtag was used 1.2 million times over the course of its viral four days. 

But this path wasn’t going to be left un-trampled: actress Alyssa Milano blazed the trail when she tweeted “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet”. That was October 15, 2017, ten days after The New York Times printed the first allegations against film executive Harvey Weinstein. Google searches for the definition of sexual assault, harassment, and specifically workplace harassment, began growing, as Thorpe explains in her Bustle article.

Days later, Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney tweeted about her sexual assault by doctor Lawrence Nassar. And fast forward two months, Time Magazine named “Silence Breakers” as the 2017 Person of the Year. This represented all the women and men who spoke up about sexual misconduct and began this global conversation. At the turn of 2018, hundreds of women in Hollywood came together to create the anti-harassment movement Times Up. At this point, the status quo was not going to cut it – this movement had become too influential. However, there were highs and lows, such as when the Senate Judiciary Committee dismissed sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The modest triumphs were equally well-publicized: Bill Cosby being sentenced at age 81 for three to ten years for his sexual crimes, and countless executives losing their jobs and livelihoods when faced with the consequences of their previously endured sexual misconduct.

#MeToo has given a voice to the silenced; it has progressed to a point that it can’t fade from the public’s consciousness. Across the country, legislation has been passed in Washington, Illinois, New York, and more states as a direct result of this movement. One tweet– “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet” – was one of the first step of the millions who brought this movement to fruition. Tarana Burke was wrong: people took the steps past Twitter to make the movement stick and establish institutional change. Beyond the United States, international movements in 85 countries have used and translated the hashtag. In June 2019, Reuters announced that a treaty explicitly against workplace violence and harassment was adopted by the International Labor Organization. Beyond decrees, though, a sexual harassment case against the mayor of Brus, Serbia, resulted in a trial and his resignation from office. His accuser, Marija Lukic, was highlighted in a Balkan Insight article describing the “Heroes of 2019.”

On June 27, 2019, Elizabeth Jean Carroll reported to the New York Times that Donald Trump had forced himself on her in the 1990s. In a June 2019 interview with the podcast The Daily’s host Michael Barbaro, she explained why she chose to not speak up earlier.  In a counternarrative to previous #MeToo stories, she worried that going public about her experience during the 2016 presidential election campaign season would help Donald Trump’s campaign since it would make “Mr. Trump appear strong in the eyes of his supporters.” Additionally, he was simply one of many in a long series of “The Most Hideous Men of (Her) Life” – and by far not the worst. However, the numerous individuals speaking up in the most publicized trials show that one person’s most hideous person is probably another person’s, as well. 

This concept of a person having a series of hideous people who’ve taken advantage of them is not uncommon. #MeToo began by giving people the platform to compare their experiences and their lists. The movement revealed the alarming extent to which people are sexually assaulted and the numerous times perpetuators have repeated these acts of sexual violence. Now the world knows: #Metoo created the legal framework, social awareness, and conversation that the paved path lacked. One by one, people stepped off the path, following the footprints of Tarana Burke and Alyssa Milano. A stampede of brave individuals ensued overnight. And now, a newly paved walkway stands where there was once only a desire.