Beyond social media

An argument for revolutionizing online spaces, inspired by a writer from 1405

Illustration for The Book of the City of Ladies, c. 1405

As its owner’s portfolio skyrocketed after last week’s election, X/Twitter witnessed an outflow of de-activated accounts. Since November 6, I’ve seen numerous complaints about loss of followers and a concurrent rise of hate speech there. This suggests the once premier social media site is experiencing a decimation of accounts.

I can only speculate who departed. Some accounts could have been foreign-owned bots and influencers, their work to promote one candidate now being done. Many others left in revulsion over the unmoderated rancor that erupted with the election results. I saw accounts pop up on Threads and Substack Notes, announcing their departure from X/Twitter with hopes for a more civil experience on the new site. Bluesky’s accounts ballooned in the same period, expanding from 9 million users in September to over 15 million in the days after the election.

The Guardian news organization announced its withdrawal from X:

“This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.

[…]

“Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences but, at this point, X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there.

“Thankfully, we can do this because our business model does not rely on viral content tailored to the whims of the social media giants’ algorithms—instead we’re funded directly by our readers.”

What the tech lords call social media has had a fundamentally anti-social impact, a fact we’ve known for more than a decade. Youth have suffered the worst of it, from cyber-bullying to unrealistic beauty expectations to stalking, but the kids aren’t alone. Conspiracy cults, militias, and extremists have cultivated followers whose numbers are legion. What was at first vaunted as a technology that would knit cultures together and save democracy has metastasized as a cancer. When people take a break from social media to improve their mental health, the rational explanation is that the impacts of these technical city-states are anti-social.

A recent post on Threads called for a social media made for women. Coincidentally, I was reading a book written in 1405, The Book of the City of Ladies. My world was rhyming.

Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies

This essay is part of a series called “Shut Out, Not Shut Up” on women through the ages who’ve written despite being dismissed because of their sex. They persisted.

Christine de Pizan was born in Venice, Italy in 1364 (christened Cristina da Pizzano) and moved to France  at the age of four, when her father took a post as the king’s astrologer in the court of Charles V. When she came of age she married a courtier and bore three children. Her husband died of the plague ten years into their marriage and Christine never remarried. Instead, she devoted herself to writing about her firmly held political and religious views. In middle age she moved to a convent out of fear for her safety—amidst a civil war and the English occupation of Paris—and she died ten years later at the age of 66.

Virginia Cox, in her introduction to Moderata Fonte’s The Worth of Women (written late 16^th century), explains the culture into which de Pizan was born. Women had no status other than through their fathers and husbands. Unless a woman had the good fortune to live amongst the aristocracy, she was expected to work in manual labor while raising any children who survived birth and early childhood. If a woman herself survived the births of her children and the plagues that swept the European continent each year, she might outlive her husband. Upon death, a husband’s assets transferred to the closest adult male heir, for instance a cousin or brother. Without a husband’s financial support, an aristocratic woman might sue the court for the husband’s heir to return her dowry to her; this, however, was not assured. A widow was expected to remarry, retire to a convent,  or earn her own keep for the remainder of her days. A woman alone was a woman without status and dependent on male largesse for legal protection.

Such was the state of women at the beginning of the modern era, 1300-1700.

“Misogyny was so long-established in European culture when the modern era opened that to dismantle it was a monumental labor. […] The other voice first appeared when, after so many centuries the accumulation of misogynist concepts evoked a response from a capable woman female defender, Christine de Pizan. […] A pioneer, she has not only received the misogynist message, but she rejects it. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, a huge body of literature accumulated that responded to the dominant tradition.

[…]

“Around 1365, the same Boccaccio whose Corbaccio rehearses the usual charges against female nature, wrote another work, Concerning Famous Women. A humanist treatise drawing on classical texts, it praised 106 notable women, […] and helped make all readers aware of a sex normally condemned or forgotten. Boccaccio’s outlook, nevertheless, is misogynist, for it singled out for praise those women who possessed the traditional virtues of chastity, silence, and obedience. Women who were active in the public realm, for example, rulers and warriors, were depicted as suffering terrible punishments for entering into the masculine sphere. Women were his subject, but Boccaccio’s standard remained male.”

At question, in the minds of the (male) thinkers of the time, was not only whether women could be virtuous and trustworthy, but also whether they should even be considered the same species as men. Whether women were capable of leadership or insight wasn’t even up for debate.

In her The Book of the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan strides into the midst of the argument and makes an audacious claim. Not only are women as worthy as men, they are superior. She creates a virtual City of Ladies, guided by three female visitors: Reason, Rectitude, and Justice. The narrator named Christine builds a city by and for women. A safe place, but more than that: a place where a woman’s worth is valued. She builds the city in the three parts of the book.

Part One

Guided by Reason, Christine lays the foundational facts surrounding the constitutional attributes of women: intelligence, wisdom, fairness, service and care for others. These attributes make women at least the equal to men, and usually superior to them, in Reason’s opinion.

Christine builds the city walls with the histories of women who demonstrated heroic strength institutionally (protecting others), civilly (as leaders of states), artistically, and intellectually. The city has its foundations and protections by means of female properties, not those copied from men.

Part Two

Rectitude helps Christine fill the city with stories of women notable through the ages into contemporary times, celebrating their honor, integrity, generosity, loyalty, and morality. Along the way she obliterates misogynistic arguments that cast women as weak, vile, selfish, and immoral. Christine asks Rectitude to address each criticism men use to demean and vilify women, and each time Rectitude uses women’s stories to illustrate that men are guilty of the criticism that they project onto women.

Part Three

Justice helps Christine erect the high turrets protecting the city, and invites the women who will inhabit it. She starts with the woman who is to rule the city, Mary, the Mother of God in the Catholic religion. Notable women from the Catholic faith, martyrs and saints, fill out the ranks.

The book effectively rebukes Boccaccio, using his catalogue listing of laudable women to draw an opposite conclusion: these women aren’t the exceptions but the rule. Christine de Pizan argues that these storied women manifested traits that are integral to womanhood itself. What made men take notice of them was their courage to defy men’s expectations of them. Men didn’t anticipate a Dido, Cleopatra, Hippolyta, or Judith. Christina asserts that these women aren’t the anomalies men assume; rather, they illustrate traits inherent to all women.

“Most honourable ladies, praise be to God: the construction of our city is finally at an end. All of you who love virtue, glory and a fine reputation can now be lodged in great splendour inside its walls, not just women of the past but also those of the present and the future, for this city has been founded and built  to accommodate all deserving women.”¹

Christine de Pizan, “The Book of the City of Ladies”

Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies was a thought experiment: a virtual city built for virtual ladies. It was a long argument against misogyny, promoting the ability of women to contribute to society in all the ways they were excluded.

Christine de Pizan’s book sparked centuries of literary debate on women’s rights and worth, but it stopped short of the calls for change that we expect of contemporary feminism. De Pizan’s argument is primarily for other women: she’d be delighted if her arguments persuaded men to be less boorish to women, but that wasn’t her rhetorical point. She wanted women to appreciate their worth and copy in their own lives the models established by the fables of saintly women. She had no interest in upending the patriarchy, a male-only hierarchy from her Church and the Court that she ardently supported. In her final pages, she counsels women in bad marriages to suffer them as a saint would do. She couldn’t advise women to leave bad marriages when the cost would be enormous for the estranged wife and not for the husband.

Although her advice might leave modern readers appalled, we should rather admire Christine de Pizan for her courageous and novel allegory in defense of women’s intelligence, integrity, strength, and social contributions. Though she created a virtual city for ladies, it didn’t prove to be illusory. She left an indelible imprint that shaped female intellectualism for centuries.  

Christine de Pizan argued that women were the equal of men, not subservient and not of a different species. As you’d guess, this was radical thinking in 1405. Unfortunately, it’s an argument that’s still contested in the US and other countries today.²

A modern virtual city, reimagined

I began by surveying the ill effects of what we know as social media. We should also consider the benefits people currently enjoy when it works for them.

Social media technology has transformed how we get news and how we communicate with widespread contacts, some of whom never meet in real life. It supports artists and freelancers with exposure to audiences they depend on for income: I truly don’t know how a writer can find an agent or book contract without having a substantial following on social media (or substantial sales of a self-published book promoted on social media). Increasingly, people bypass news sites (which usually require subscriptions) and instead log in to socal media for free news (or, “news”). According to Pew, 54% of US adults get their news on social media: about 1/3 of US adults regularly use Facebook or YouTube as a news source; about one-fifth get their news reguarly from Instagram or TikTok.

People turn to social media feeds daily for humor, comfort (all those cats and dogs!), and entertainment. They find inspiration for cooking, knitting, woodworking, gardening. They experience the relaxing influence of watching something disgusting being cleaned expertly, or an out-of-control yard mowed into submission. They read stories (whether true or not is largely irrelevant) of acts of kindness and retribution, and vicariously experience the catharsis those experiences invoke. They share the posts that hold meaning for them, effectively strengthening and extending relationships that are essential to well-being.

These are the anecdotal evidence to which technology companies point, when justifying their apps: community, connection, making life better. This is the promise that pulls people back to the platform, or causes them to leave one site to try again on another, rather than abandon social media altogether.

Re-imagining the experience

You find yourself walking down the streets of a city that’s at once familiar and unknown. Some landmarks suggest you’re in Paris, but if so, this would be the Holodeck version in which languages are no barrier and crime doesn’t exist. Much has changed since Christine de Pizan lived here.

You discover that you’re not a tourist, but someone who belongs here. You walk along cobbled streets and notice a riot of diversity amongst the people around you. The vibe is accepting: you can’t be too weird to fit in here. Whatever marks you as unique in real life, some variation from culturally-defined perfection, is unremarkable in this virtual city. People who are differently abled find no barriers.

Individuals in the crowd meet your eye and nod. When you walk up to a small group, they smoothly create a gap for you to step into. They smile and acknowledge you.

You see a cellist in his usual spot on the stairs to the Sacré Cœur; his case is brimming with bills and coins. You like what you hear, and purchase his music to take away with you. Afterward, you’re surprised when you realize that your stroll around the city isn’t interrupted by other cellists popping up in your path, or the same cellist waiting for you on the next corner.

You pass by art galleries and sketch artists with easles on the street. You have the choice to enjoy and walk on, leave a tip, or make a purchase that will be shipped to you later. You have the option with the artist whose work you admire, as with the musician, to keep in touch.

You open the door of a bar and walk inside. The place is busy, but as you make your way through the crowd there are no roving hands or anonymous comments about your body that are whispered into your ear. You realize this is a bar where you won’t have to cover your drink if you look away. Your shoulders relax as you settle in.

In one corner, a couple of old revolutionaries argue politics. They’re clearly friends. One man places his hand on the other’s arm as he argues a point, and the other man just smiles and shakes his head. Their argument has been going on for decades, you suspect.

At another table, a larger, diverse group is deep in conversation about a public policy. Another group nearby is rehashing a sports game; they seem to be fans of different teams but are good-natured as they talk smack. Three people sit across from the sports fans; they’re discussing a film that apparently had a controversial ending.

Empty chairs are placed near every group, an open invitation to anyone who wants to join. As you turn your head around the room, a few things become startlingly clear.

Although discussions sometimes lead to raised voices, they rise in volume not in threat or anger but in conviction and enthusiasm.

Disagreements are respectful. People listen and acknowledge others’ points, even when they disagree. When someone makes a point that’s missed by the group, another person amplifies the point to make sure others hear.

The people in every group base their opinions on shared facts. Sometimes facts are disputed (Was that play flagged or not? What’s the policy’s language on this point?), and they consult reliable sources to secure the facts before moving on.

Some of those reliable sources are reporters who follow rigorous journalistic standards and publish in this city. Because shared facts are integral to trust, the people here support those who supply them with facts: local, national, and international journalists, scientists, educators. In return for this trusting support, the people who deal in facts are held to high standards of citation and transparency. When they misstep, they take responsibility for it and issue corrections.

As you walk out of the bar, you reflect on the people at the tables whose ideas didn’t win the day. Although they didn’t appear happy about the result, they don’t act angry or disrespectful. You reflect that people don’t feel harmed if they were heard, understood, acknowledged, and respected despite holding a contrarian view. This feels strange and somehow unreal.  

You feel a buzzing on your wrist, and see that you’re wearing a device that’s lit in red. You tap it, and the scene dissolves. You’re sitting near your window, watching the slant of the sun. It’s time to get  back to your tangible life. As you go about your day, the virtual city doesn’t ping you constantly to bring you back. If your experience has been positive, it trusts you’ll return.

What would have to be true?

You may think this kind of experience dull and uninteresting since it lacks the high drama of charged emotions—a desire that’s well met by social media as we know it. But if your response is that people can’t be counted on to be nice to each other, I’d argue that this is entirely possible, and was once, when civility was a norm.

If you’re a woman, much of the scenario may feel wildly unbelievable. Yet, almost every man I’ve met has walked into a bar not needing to be alert to potential assault. Every male in meetings I’ve attended has expected to have his speech respected and heard. He’s usually assumed that his statements of fact would be unchallenged, and that his perspective was universal.

If it seems foreign to you, perhaps you’ve never enjoyed the privileges of the straight white man in a patriarchal society. It may seem unrealistic that those benefits enjoyed by the minority could be shared widely across societies. Stay with me while we explore what would have to be possible for this to be true.

It would require a few fundamental changes.

• Impact over profit

• Accountability

• Transparency

Rejecting the Colossus of money and power

What we know as social media is made by men to enrich themselves.³ What you see when you open your chosen app has been designed with the male ego in mind. Women may have been employed in its creation, but the grand design is patriarchal.

The large social media sites were built to generate unimaginable wealth for a small enclave of owners. The sites are ostensibly free to join, but users pay with their data, their wallets (payments to advertisers), and even their artistic or professional work.⁴

If the venture isn’t required to be extravagantly profitable, the entire user experience changes. Users aren’t the product; they’re the reason for being. The technology wouldn’t exist to support advertisers, so users wouldn’t be assaulted with pushy ads. It wouldn’t need to use hidden and unknowable algorithms to gig responses that increase profitability. It would even be possible to release users from addictive behaviors intended to keep them on the site longer—a strategy used currently because stickiness is more profitable. Perhaps users would have an option to set session time limits, giving them a gentle nudge that their lives are richer when balanced with more off-screen time.

The purpose of the technology would be to enable safe and respectful discussions; to promote balanced and healthy disagreements; to connect artists with audiences; to connect people with similar interests; to share laughter and concerns; to disseminate factual information that’s critical to just societies globally. Its ultimate mission would be to dismantle patriarchal thinking that imagines hierarchies amongst people who are all in fact equals, if only at the moments of birth and death.  Everything in between is man-made. It can be reimagined.

Norms and by-laws (T&C); accountability

Terms & Conditions (T&C) should state in readable font, in plain language, reciprocal requirements and benefits between the company and the client. The site should have no tolerance for hate speech, personal threats, abuse, and attacks. The T&C should protect the client’s data and intellectual property. Clients should be responsible for not using copyrighted material without permission. The company would enforce its T&C, legally if necessary. Accountability must be meaningful to those whose actions threaten the site’s obligations to its clients.  

Norms would encompass—at minimum—treating others on the site with respect. Norms would be enforced at the account level (blocking, muting, reporting abuse).   

Transparency

Algorithms should be transparent, and constructed so that users can determine how they want the algorithm to work best for them.

Anonymity shouldn’t be allowed. The mask of anonymity allows people to do things they wouldn’t want associated with their reputations, and encourages uncivil behavior. Every account should require disclosing the real, identifiable person setting it up. Every user should know that they’re accountable for what they post. Every user who sees a post should know that there’s a real person behind the account, not a bot.

The site should be transparent about its principles, and be accountable to users for meeting them, and taking responsibility when they fail to.    

These are the requirements for trust. Safety isn’t possible without it.

A city for all, not just women

Christine de Pizan clarified when she wrote of the city being for all ladies, “or rather those of you who have proved yourself to be worthy.” Although the Threads user was calling for a social media for women, I think that a site welcoming to women would suit every gender. Anti-misogynism and anti-patriarchy don’t require that women run things. Rather, it advocates for eliminating structures that separate, marginalize, and denigrate some people.

Deepening social divisions have encouraged people to stay within like-minded groups. The isolationist effects diminish all of us. For instance, I don’t want to insulate myself against people who think differently than me, but currently my options are to stay in a bubble or be exposed to lies and hate. I think that’s a false choice. I’m liberal and my neighbor isn’t, but if we share basic decency and respect facts, we can talk.

I learn from people who know things I don’t know, who have experiences I haven’t had, and who think things I’ve never seriously considered. But I can’t learn from someone who harms others, even from a remove. Whoever threatens some threatens all.

Purveyors of hate, regardless their target, have platforms to propagate their incitement. Those of us who disagree deserve a space free of them.

Ellie’s Corner

Ellie injured her leg a week ago. Over the long weekend (Remembrance Day is a provincial holiday here), I worried over her. She became afraid of stairs, which caused her obvious pain to climb. This restricted what she could do, because unfortunately our place has stairs everywhere she wants to go. Once she got to a place, she hunkered down in it. In the pic above, I’d placed a frozen bag of corn on her injured leg and had covered it with a blanket to hold it in place. She’s looking at me trying to communicate just how awful she feels.

She had a scheduled appointment on Tuesday with the vet, which was fortunate. With TLC, pain meds, joint supplements, and a new diet, Ellie’s now returned to her former, waggy self. We hope that between slimming down a bit and supplements, she’ll continue being active and enjoying life, stairs and all, for years to come.

Thanks for reading,

1. De Pizan’s viewpoint is stringently religious, and she notes that some women aren’t deserving—that is, they choose to be immoral. She has a lot of advice about suffering bad marriages that, while true to her religious tenets, don’t celebrate or support women. She cites the torture of many female martyrs, made to suffer unimaginable horrors, but who are sustained and protected by God. None of that is good life advice, but rather intended to be inspirational in the 15^th century.

2. The Dobbs decision by the US Supreme Court established that the US Constitution doesn’t recognize female autonomy. Andrew Tate, a man with 10 million followers on X and who’s eluding extradition, has said that women shouldn’t have the right to vote. He proudly calls himself a misogynist. It’s not unthinkable that the 19th Amendment (granting women the right to vote) will be challenged in the near future.

3. I’m using the term ‘social media’ to refer to social apps owned by tech giants: X/Twitter, Facebook/Threads, TikTok, and YouTube primarily. There are other, smaller sites, which have a variety of missions, mostly variations on the themes of the major players and none of which have completely overcome the issues described in this essay. But I do want to acknowledge that not every social media site is comparable to X/Twitter.

4. X/Twitter’s latest terms and conditions require users to give away to the company their intellectual property rights for any work published on the site. This is, expectedly, driving away even more people who have integrity.