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by Ido Singer
April 27, 2026
Imagine a group of women, fake scars applied to their faces. They looked in a mirror and saw themselves disfigured.
Then, as they were led out of the room to a job interview, the researchers quietly removed the scars. The women walked in looking exactly as they always had.
They came back reporting massively increased discrimination.
Many of them identified specific comments the interviewer had made that they were certain referenced their disfigurement. Comments the interviewer never made with any such intention. The scar was gone. The wound was not.
That experiment stopped me cold — not because it was surprising, but because it named something I had been watching for years without having the right language for it.
If we tell people constantly that they are oppressed, that …
