What if there isn't any marginalization?

 No wonder the woke want to ban free speech and idea exchange in universities.  The truth keeps coming out.

One of the bedrock beliefs in critical theory is that certain classes of "marginalized" people are disproportionately disfavored by those in power.  The biggest class of "marginalized" people are women.  How ignored are they?  Not at all per this research.

From Women Want an Answer! Field Experiments on Elected Officials and Gender Bias by Gabriele Magni and Zoila Pone de Leon.  From the Abstract:

Are elected officials more responsive to men than women inquiring about access to government services? Women face discrimination in many realms of politics, but evidence is limited on whether such discrimination extends to interactions between women and elected officials. In recent years, several field experiments have examined public officials’ responsiveness. The majority focused on racial bias in the USA, while the few experiments outside the USA were usually single-country studies. We explore gender bias with the first large-scale audit experiment in five countries in Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Netherlands) and six in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay). A citizen alias whose gender is randomized contacts members of parliament about unemployment benefits or healthcare services. The results are surprising. Legislators respond significantly more to women (+3% points), especially in Europe (+4.3% points). In Europe, female legislators in particular reply substantially more to women (+8.4% points).

Subject to replication.

At face value though, that is a pretty jarring disconnect.  They start with a confident assertion of opinion masquerading as fact, "Women face discrimination in many realms of politics," and conclude with "legislators respond significantly more to women (+3% points), especially in Europe (+4.3% points)."

Small differences like 2-4% might be explainable away based on confounding variables.  Women consume more healthcare than men so presumably there might not be any difference in responsiveness when confounding variables are appropriately controlled for.  

But wider gaps such as 5-10% become more likely to represent a real discrimination rather than confounding variables.  Sounds like potentially female legislators in Europe might be actively discriminating against their male constituents.  We would need to know more.  Confounding variables are devilish things and can drive wide gaps.   So there still might not be any real discrimination.

But the research is intriguingly suggestive.  In an era when we have an ideology confidently asserting mass discriminatory victimization where commonsense and worm's eye experience suggest otherwise, any real data is highly useful for calibrating true risk and therefore policy.

Many policies have been pursued based on assumptions and opinions which bear little correlation with real world conditions and the sooner we get rid of them, the better.  In most OECD countries, contrary to prevailing ideological narratives:

Men are at much greater risk of violent crime than women.

Men constitute a significant portion of rape victims.

Women on campus are at lower risk of rape than women off campus.

Women are paid the same for equal work.

Legislators are more responsive to women than to men.

The first four are well documented and little accepted by ideologues.  "Follow the science" is not actually a normal behavior for true believers.  The fifth assertion is based on this paper in an under-researched field.  We need to know more.

But what happens if, with a plethora of rigorous studies which control for confounding variables, we discover that there are no victim groups?  That no one is actually marginalized?  That all variances in outcomes are attributable to personal choices, decisions, actions, and behaviors?

Just imagine the volume of well-intended but costly and ineffective legislation and policy we could dispose of.  That in itself might be an enormous stimulus to productivity and prosperity.  Not to mention to the psychological well-being when people no longer have to fight to self-victimize themselves to try and get the fruits of marginal government policies.  Where everyone could be reasonably confident that we live in a world where we can be judged on our behaviors and actions rather than live in fear of imagined discrimination.