I don't like the social justice axiom "You can never understand what it's like to experience (an oppression you aren't the victim of.)" I mean, it is literally true that you'll never have first-hand experience being a person different from yourself, and all the various nuances of their lived experiences, but I don't think this axiom is very useful. It's a wall to attempts to have empathy and understand the experiences of others. No, I'll never 100% know "what it's like to be a Black woman" (which is not a singular experience anyway) but shouldn't I always try to empathize and understand the experiences of others?
When I read a book like Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, like, no of course I can't say "well because I've read this book I know what it's like to be a Black woman" and that would be a dumb thing to say. But should I not still always be trying to understand? Should I not be thinking things like "wow, the way that all the white people in this book just want to possess Amira and project onto her what they think she should do or be like rather than seeing things from her perspective... that must feel so dehumanizing and frustrating for Amira. And the way she feels realizing her boyfriend is a chaser, I mean yeah I've been there realizing a guy was fetishizing me and it feels awful so I understand that experience."
When a cis woman hears about her experiences, I actually don't feel good hearing her say "Of course I could never understand how you're feeling" like that just emphasizes the distance between us and our differences. But you know what does feel good? I'd rather be hearing "This isn't quite the same, but I've experiences something similar so I can imagine how you might be feeling."
Of course your holistic nuanced full life experience is going to be different from every other person you meet, but actually it's really beautiful when people from different groups identify places where their experiences do overlap. It fosters camaraderie, bonding, caring, and solidarity. Once you realize you have that overlap, suddenly it's much more personal when you see the other one be attacked, and you fight so much harder for them. It's actually really beautiful when an Autistic white person and a neurotypical person of color realize they both experience people constantly interpreting them as being rude and hostile even when there was actually nothing wrong with what they said. Now those two individuals are close, and they care about each other more. And when one of them gets misread, the other one will stand up for them in solidarity.
At work, we have an English Conversation Group, and immigrants from all over the world come hang out and socialize to practice speaking English. People become close friends who are very different. There's this old Vietnamese grandmother and this young Ukrainian woman who have gotten very close. You know what I've overheard them talking about? They both had to flee their homes because of a war. They both have names that nobody in America can pronounce so they've taken on anglicized names. They decided to learn how to pronounce each other's names the correct way. Both of their countries have been colonized by an imperial power. Of course the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Vietnam War are very different. The Ukrainian woman has not moved to Russia as a refugee. Communism is not involved. Their cultures are quite different, their ages are different, the national sentiment about the war is different, and their skin color is different so they don't experience xenophobia the same. But they do have a lot of overlap and instead of saying "Well I'll never understand what it's like to be you (good, progressive)" they're saying "well, I do understand some of what you're going through" and forming a friendship.
Philly is one of the most diverse cities in the country, even the world. People are constantly interacting with people from very different cultures, backgrounds, identity, etc. and Philly is also a city where people turn out in solidarity big time for each other in ways I never saw in far more segregated New England. If you ask people why they're such a strong ally, they'll say "I have a cousin/sibling/child/friend/friend's child/coworker/coworker's mom/neighbor/etc who is ______________________." People naturally come to emphasize with and care about the people they know and spend time around and that makes them want to fight for them. There's a reason the first step of genocide is to remove the target minority from public life. If the majority of people actually know people from the target group, they won't allow anyone to hurt them. Why promote an axiom that discourages this?
Once the axiom spread, I've even heard people use it for incredibly specific and personal things. Nothing like "I'll never understand what it's like to experience this particular oppression" but even just "Well, since I've never been in a car accident, I of course can't imagine what you're going through right now, having just been in a car accident." Isn't that just a completely unhelpful way of thinking? Sympathize! Have empathy! Imagine how you would feel if you were in a car accident! Is that exactly how the other person is feeling? Probably not! But it's good to at least try to understand! Whether it's ableism or falling down an escalator. It's so much better to say "I imagine you're probably feeling really scared right now. That's how I would feel if it were me (but hey maybe I'm wrong)" than to say "I can't imagine what your experience is like. (because I'm very progressive and left wing)"
Especially around issues of ableism and transness, I actually think it's really important to recognize that a lot of outsiders actually very much do understand what it's like to experience what we go through, they just don't realize it yet. Once you discover those overlapping experiences, you become each other's allies. You get loud for each other. You're able to actually truly connect emotionally with each other instead of just seeing each other as the surface-level demographic differences. You become friends and you actually start to see a lot of the nuances you might have thought you'd never understand.
In general, I think the idiot "ally" who says something homophobic and uses "but I watched Brokeback Mountain!" as some kind of defense of their behavior, is really just kind of a myth more than a real person. Maybe there's some clueless rich white ladies who say that stuff but ultimately I don't think the axiom of "you can't understand me" is very useful when, to most people, it's just obvious that it's dumb to claim you completely understand the experiences of a person you aren't because of something unrelated.
Just understand that you have different experiences from other people in general, try to understand each other, and find the overlap when you can. You'll never get all the way to understanding, but it's good to keep trying anyway.
