You've never experienced X, so you can't have an opinion on it

This is a common argument I hear, where someone will state their opinion on a given situation, and the other person will say something along the lines of, "Well, you've never [done/experienced] X, so you have no right to [judge/have an opinion/talk about] it. Is this fallacious? The best example I could think of would be:

P1: I think spanking children is wrong.
P2: You've never had children, so you have no right to judge other people's parenting.

(not a jab at parents, this is just the best example of this form I can think of at the moment)

The overall form of the argument is not fallacious in itself, but only applications are. If we take your example and modify it a bit:

Person1: I think spanking children should be avoided because decades of research has demonstrated that children who are spanked have many more psychological issues as adults.

Person 2: You've never had children, so you have no right to judge other people's parenting.

This is a non-sequitur because person 1 isn't making a judgement about parenting; but stating a fact. Person 1 does not have to have experience with parenting to know that spanking a child should be avoided.

Now let's modify this again:

Person1: I think a parent should never spank a child because decades of research has demonstrated that children who are spanked have many more psychological issues as adults.

Person 2: You've never had children, so you don't realize that in some cases, spanking the child could be the lesser of the two evils and therefore is the best course of action.

Perfectly valid point. In this example, the lack of experience of having a child does matter since Person 1 used an absolute statement about spanking.

There is no hard rule here. The key points are 1) make sure that the second person isn't objecting to the wrong issue and 2) decide if experience matters or not based on the argument being made.

{date-time stamp}Saturday, Aug 03, 2019 08:49 AM{/date-time stamp}

Someone sent this comment:

Comment: I feel as if there is a crucial point of contention here.

You made a point in one of your responses about formality of the statement. This leads me to believe you are solely basing your response on the example given rather than the premise of the question.

If we rephrased the question to a formal argument, maybe we could have better clarification. This argument in which would presume party (b) could not have any combination of, and/or either independently: knowledge of, the ability to comprehend, or the option to opinionate on a topic that party (a) had either experienced first hand, or believes can only be understood first hand. Is that scenario still within a logical framework and thus not fallacious as you previously mentioned?

If that is too generalized, maybe this example could better capture the over all essence of the believed issue with the argument.
- party (a) a highly functioning autistic person believes that party (b) should not and could not speak about understanding how the autism spectrum works regardless of their educational background or research studied. Because they have not experienced it first hand.

I really dislike using an example here because it narrows the answer, and this issue is seen in so many instances that a more generalized conception of the argument seems to be more telling of the issue at hand.

Curious to see if anything will change or if all is still as you say, highly dependent on each scenario and generally not fallacious.

Would appreciate any public response you could give.

And thank you for your time. Both previously and if you Happen to make it to this.

The examples are vital because this is an error of context and not form. In your example, there is an implied claim that someone not on the autism spectrum cannot understand how the autism spectrum works. This is a little vague and I would have get clarification what we are talking about. If we are talking about experiences, then no, only those on the spectrum can have those experiences. If we are talking about biological, behavioral, and other aspects that can be measured and observed, then being on the spectrum to have this understanding is not a requirement.

Hope that makes it more clear.

Correction of a few typos in my response.

I am not sure this would be truly a fallacy, but in classes on communication skills I took the response "I know how you feel." fails in talking to other people with problems, because in reality one does not know how someone else feels. This and other approaches like "feeling for someone, or feeling as some one else feels," are considered sympathetic responses and tend restrict communication and may illicit hostility. It is best to use reflective empathetic phrases that let the other person know you are willing to listen to them. Phrases like; "I can see this has upset you. Do you want to talk about it?"

It seems to me that this has the same form as the argument against celibate priests not being able to give advice to married couples or about to be married couples because they have never been married themselves. The point is not whether someone has had the exact experience but whether someone can relate to the underlying universals of the subject. Marriage is fundamentally about relating to another person and that is what priests can relate to. A fallacy of applying a limitation to a person's capabilities around a specific characteristic of a situation rather than being able to see the underlying human experience.

P1: I think spanking children is wrong.
P2: You've never had children, so you have no right to judge other people's parenting.

I would say the respondent commits a red herring, he shifts the question about whether spanking is wrong to whether only those who parent can speak to issues involving children. I love when people throw in the word "judge" to try and put the other person on the defensive. Anthony Weiner did this brilliantly in the famous bakery argument with the chap waiting in line with him, google it.

P2 also seems to be tacitly implying that he spanks his kid, and uses his response as a kind of get out of a jail card, as if he's saying " if you had to deal with kids you'd lose it too and spank them now and again, youre not a parent so you don't understand" This doesn't address whether its "wrong".

Getting back to P1's question, If there are meta analysis out there on spanking and they argue one way or another that spanking is wrong, one doesn't have to be a parent to conclude that its wrong if its been scientifically researched and the consensus is yes, its harmful overall

The implications of P2's response are that we couldn't trust any report on spanking done by a childless person, say a social scientist, clearly ridiculous.