"Lived experience" is now used as a term for "personal interpretations or claims motivated by what I want from you."

I believe it was originally supposed to mean what it literally sounds like: the experiences one has lived through. Like if a woman says she's constantly groped at parties and a man says, "I've never seen that," he should shut up because she's saying what she literally experienced.

But now it seems to be used differently. "It is my lived experience that I am a panda," = "I desperately wish I were a panda, and I experience that desperate wishing, so I am a panda and you're a bigot if you argue."

It's kind of like the word "valid." Originally, "Your feelings are valid," just meant that feelings can't be "wrong." Feelings are just feelings and can't be "false" because emotions exist outside of the false vs. factually accurate spectrum.

But then, "Your emotions are valid," changed into, "Your emotions are an accurate factual reflection of what is factually and objectively correct in the world around you. If you feel a thing, the accompanying thoughts are surely also valid and therefore factually true."

This should be obvious nonsense (and the entire psychiatric field of CBT, which is an excellently effective form of therapy for many issues, is based on the fact that it's nonsense).

Feelings and thoughts aren't the same thing, and while feelings are "valid" (ie cannot be incorrect since they're just an emotional state), thoughts can absolutely be invalid.

The, "Everything you feel is valid and therefore your resulting thoughts are factually accurate," thing is horrifyingly toxic. I can come up with an example of how badly this idea can work out in the real world right now:

Let's say I'm a parent and my baby is screaming. I feel bad and sad and ashamed and I'm angry. I want to lash out.

In response to that feeling, I am reminded of how I felt when my parent screamed abuse at me.

I have the same feelings I had when my parent abused me. It makes me think of my baby in terms of my abusive parent.

Feelings are valid and therefore the resulting thoughts are valid. Therefore, my baby is abusing me.

Time to treat my baby like an abuser deserves to be treated! It's self-defense!

Phrases and concepts that were born of a desire to give words to what victims of abuse experienced are constantly co-opted by abusers and/or the insecure mentally disturbed. All the time.

So now we have a bunch of people saying you're "enacting violence" if you don't say their self-ID (the thought that happens in reaction to their feeling) is factually valid.

"I'm a woman with a girldick! I'm valid!"