To HATE the phrase "lived experience"?

[ThisFluentBiscuit]

Pet peeve incoming:

By definition, experience is lived! You can hardly have an experience without living it, fgs! And what's the opposite of lived experience? An experience that you've had, yet haven't lived? It's complete nonsense. It's used to sound falsely clever when an argument is weak, like "In my personal experience." Well, of course your experience is personal! You would hardly say, "In my neighbour's experience, I find Florida too cold in December."

And it's officially wrong, because it's a tautology. Like "top-floor penthouse."

I don't know whether it's the innate stupidity of the phrase or the fact that it's a linguistic fad that annoys me the most.

"stamps off"

I've looked at various definitions online - all slightly different - and they really don't help. If you say you have experience, you then need to go on to describe it so people know your perspective. Saying 'lived experience' implies you've got some special knowledge but it doesn't actually mean anything. All experience is lived.

That is an argument of having limited lived experience not no lived experience.
So still depends personal experience and living environment

So if you have experience of something, it's not necessarily first-hand experience? If I say that I have experience of cruising, it's possible that I mean I don't have first-hand experience of it? Come on.

I agree, but people often do use it that way. I’ve seen a fair few WW on MN claim they have “experience” of racism (for example), so now that the unoppressed want to claim oppression, there has to be language to describe the “lived” experiences to differentiate from that.

Your co-worder has experience of working in immigration. You have experience of being an immigrant. It's not hard.

I have professional experience of autism because I professionally support people with autism, I have personal experience of autism because I know people who are autistic. I do not have lived experience of it because I do not have autism.

There are different kinds of experience.

Yes but say you saw you would say ‘in my experience people who have received racist remarks suffered……’ if you were the person receiving racism you’d say ‘my lived experience is that……’

Agree.

OP you obviously haven't understood what it means in a professional sense and have heard it applied wrongly. It's now been explained and there's nothing left to argue. I didn't know the difference either really, have read this thread and now I do.

I get the impression OP has no intention of trying to understand.

It’s used to differentiate between professional experience and personal experience. Which are not the same thing.

Exactly that. I think you’re just trying to wind people up actually.

You could also have so-called lived experience of racism by being a racist. Their perspective, abhorrent though it would be, would be just as 'lived'. You always need an explanation of the experience in order to understand the perspective. 'Lived experience' tells you nothing and making assumptions is dangerous.

@ThisFluentBiscuit so if you want a therapist experienced in autism that means they must be autistic?

Or a lawyer experienced in family law that means they must have been in a custody battle themselves?

Someone could say I have experience of being a person with autism. But it is a bit of a mouthful and lived experience is much easier to say.

If working in support services you often have to differentiate between professionals with experience and those who use the services in order to involve them, for instance, in evaluating or designing services. ‘We need to ask people who have experience of living with schizophrenia’ is longer than ‘we need to ask people with lived experience’. People always look for shorter ways to say things.

There's a prime example of how the phrase isn't helpful! Someone else said it's whether it's a victim's experience. One definition I read said it's 'lived' if it's ongoing rather than in the past.

It can be applied in many ways. These are all just examples of how the phrase can be used.

In my line of work, experience would relate to being a worker who supports people in need. Lived experience would relate to the person in need. For policy development, we'd want to consult both parties, for their different perspectives.

I will never respect the phrase "lived experience" because it's objectively wrong. It implies that it's possible to have experience that you haven't lived. If that isn't enough of a reason not to respect it, it's a tautology, which makes it objectively wrong. I will not respect language that is objectively wrong.

In the bolded paragraph, let's say the issue is domestic violence. The worker would never say that they had experience of domestic violence if they didn't. They would - or should - say that they have experience of supporting people who have experienced DV. The only person who has experience of domestic violence is the person to whom it happened.

If the worker was getting to know someone new, if they said "I have experience of domestic violence" the listener would assume they had been attacked. They would say that they have experience of working/supporting/listening to victims of DV.

It would be totally wrong to say that the worker had experience of DV and the victim had lived experience of it. The worker, in this scenario, only has experience of supporting the victims of DV.

It’s 2 different things, and there are times when the distinction is important.

It implies that it's possible to have experience that you haven't lived. If that isn't enough of a reason not to respect it, it's a tautology, which makes it objectively wrong. I will not respect language that is objectively wrong.

If you visit Auschwitz to “experience” the horrors of if, have you lived it?

You're being pedantic. Language evolves. Phrases come in and out of use. It’s nothing new.

The OP is, in fact, correct.

I work in the justice system, I have lots of experience of criminal justice, I have never been subject to it it, been remanded/sentenced to custody etc. The term lived experience is used in my field rather than the term offender or ex offender which used to be the terms used. Someone who has been to prison has lived it, that's different to someone who works there. Policy development now includes lived experience perspectives or consultation, that's right, because their input will be different to mine. They have physically lived within the criminal justice system.

Do you mean it’s like saying “9am in the morning”?

Quite. Such an odd thing to have a bee in your bonnet about. Even if they are right (which they aren’t) I couldn’t get worked up about this.

If you visit Auschwitz to “experience” the horrors of if, have you lived it?

If anyone thinks they've experienced the horrors of Auschwitz by visiting the structures where the unspeakable occurred, they're in sore need of some reading.

I've visited the Bloody Chamber in the Tower of London. I did not experience torture there. I've experienced visiting the place where torture once occurred.