It’s a strange phenomenon to be honest, and the first time I had heard something like that jarred me.
I was speaking to someone about my experience of discovering that I was bisexual and they had said, “If I was bisexual, I would have figured it out immediately. I don’t know how you didn’t.” It threw me for a loop.
How do you even respond to something like that?
They then proceeded to explain what their hypothetical bisexual experience would be like, despite me telling them about my actual experience.
After that conversation, I had actually realised this wasn’t the first time I had heard something like that, I had just gotten used to it: “If I was a person of colour/female/had a disability, I would have done …”
These were all conversations I have had a million times, but my sexuality was something new. I’m not saying you can’t try to imagine what it would be like to be in someone else’s shoes.
A lot of empathetic exercises revolve around that.
But once you come up with this scenario, you can’t assume your hypothetical viewpoint of it is more real or more true than someone’s actual experience.
