Brendan O'Neill: The Tyranny Of "Lived Experience"

Well, to start with: what other kind of experience do they think there is, anyway?

What they mean is: personal experience.

But "lived experience" gives it a kind of veneer of veracity. I lived it! It was real!

This seems ok.

But I'd add: basically, when they think they've got vaguely scientific evidence on their side, they appeal to that. When they don't, or when it's against them, they argue that science fails to capture the alleged facts that their "lived experience"...etc. etc.

But basically, the progressive left considers itself to possess the truth in every jot and tittle of its doctrine. Producing support for that doctrine doesn't even rise to the level of formality--it's just an annoyance. It's part of their view that their view is always right. It's dogma all the way down.

And I'm somebody who thinks that first-person accounts of stuff are useful. And that statistical evidence doesn't capture everything. So I'm, in general, actually sympathetic. Except: the evidential value of first-person accounts varies. When you're dealing with histrionic dogmatists, it's not of much value. 

And, as for the "trans" stuff: most of what's most important about the view isn't amenable either to statistical or to first-person evidence. What's central is really the recognition that the concepts man, woman, girl and boy are species/sex/age concepts. Men are adult, male humans, and so on. That's a matter of linguistic usage or conceptual analysis. It doesn't matter how many males feel as if they're female, it won't change those facts.