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"

How on earth am I wrong? Please tell me how it's possible to have an experience without living it?

I find the primacy and unassailability of lived experience irritating at the minute, working in autism.
I have worked with hundreds of autistic people over a 30 year career and have a very good understanding of autism, it's rich variety and the many ways it can impact people.
This is however of zero credibility compared with a highly verbal and communicative 20 year old autistic person who can demonstrate "lived experience" which is of course immensely valuable and can give wonderful insights - into their autism experience. They don't have lived experience of every facet of autism or of being pre-verbal or having learning disabilities as well as autism. I wish people would remember that, especially policy makers.

People have told you. Repeatedly. The entire thread is full of people telling you.

Sorry op but you are being pedantic and obtuse. A tautology is a very specific phrase where the two "sides" of a statement are identical eg "a triangle is three sided shape". Lived experience is not the same as, has been explained frequently, one can have professional, academic, second hand experience of something which they would usually state if commenting. Lived experience is another version of experience so not the same as just "experience".

No, you have professional experience of supporting people with autism. You do not have experience of autism, since you do not know what it's like to have it. Saying that you have experience of autism in this instance is short-hand for "I have experience of supporting people with autism."

Fuck me having an experience and having experience are different things! Perhaps look up a dictionary.

No, they haven't. Not one person has been able to tell me how I can have an experience without living it.

I went on a cruise. Did I live that experience or not? If you can explain how I went on a cruise yet did not live through it, I'd love to hear it.

They are, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about how it's possible to have an experience, or experience if you like, without living through it. Because the idiotic phrase "lived experience" implies that there is experience which is not lived.

OP doesn't want to understand it.... I'm off. Enjoy! 😁

Well you have a lived experience of a cruise, so yes. Surely it’s not that difficult to work out how some experiences can only occur through being lived, and others are second hand experiences. You don’t understand something and that’s ok. Most people make n effort to learn about things they don’t understand rather than just repeating that they don’t understand it though.

We have lived through a global pandemic, but we didn't all experience it.
Lived experience isn't a fad phrase. It's used in Social Sciene, MH care, etc.
So yes, lived experience is a defined thing. You are wrong, not just unreasonable

“In my experience, (having examined patients with spots)….”
”in my experience (reading many peer reviewed papers on spots)…”
”In my lived experience (of having spots)…”

I think I agree and disagree.

Lived experience has a specific meaning which was an academic term. It's now being used widely and it sounds a bit wanky.

I just find I'm getting old and gen z language changes are fast and overuse words to sound clever. For example, iconic. This is now so overused it has lost its meaning.

You'd have experience of teaching autistic pupils. The pupils would have experience of being autistic. No need for the word 'lived' anywhere.

Used to be that we'd add the word "personal", job done.

There are different ways to have experience or be experienced in relation to an issue.

Eg, I have experience of cardiology through training and clinical practice. I have no lived experience of actually having a heart problem. Both types of experience can be relevant.

Personal can mean your neighbour or your sister though.

When 'lived experience' takes precedence over other sorts, it is a version of standpoint epistemology. I am by no means an expert by Kathleen Stock dismantles it nicely in her book Material Girls.

It annoys the hell out of me. Lived experience = anecdote and the plural of that, as we know, is not data. Thus a terrible basis for policy decisions.

I'm not, and your understanding of a tautology is incorrect. The sentence "A triangle is three-sided shape" is a description of a triangle. A tautology would be to say "A three-sided triangle," since a triangle is always three-sided.

You would never claim to have experience of something that you did not. You would qualify it, as you did above, by calling it "second-hand experience."

Having experience of something is, by definition, something that you have lived through.

If I have been a rape victim then I have experience of rape. You could also call it lived experience.

If I'm a support worker of rape victims then I only have experience of working with rape victims. That role and the work involved didn't give me experience of rape.

I think experience is the same as lived experience.

Thank you. Exactly.

It’s an oxymoron, focus on moron.

No, "personal experience" is as wrong and redundant as "lived experience."

I'm with OP on this. My experience is because I've lived it so therefore it's lived by definition.

Anyone who claims they've experienced homophobia/racism etc simply through witnessing it being directed at someone else, without ever having had it directed at them, is a dickhead if the highest order. They've witnessed it; the victim has experienced it.