"Invalidating my Existence," is a term I've been hearing a lot lately. It's hard to discern what it might mean exactly.
One way of understanding it is in the context of how it is actually used. I hear it used to mean, "invalidating the existence of a category I put myself in" (e.g. transgender). Taken that way, there's no reason to think invalidating someone's existence is a bad thing. I call myself a martian, and when someone says martians don't exist it's nothing personal. Whether the category I put myself in exists is up for debate. After all, I don't know through sheer introspection whether or not martians exist.
How about a real life example? Supposed I call themselves one of God's chosen people like many others. Now, if you claim atheism you must be invalidating my existence. If there is not God, then there are no chosen people, and I cannot be one. By being an atheist, you've destroyed the category of being I have placed myself in - thereby invalidating my existence.
That definition won't do.
Another way of interpreting the term is as, "making me feel like nothing." This is a deep problem we all face, where we tie our identity up with an idea and when someone challenges the idea if feels like they're attacking us. How do we get past this?
One way is for us to stop talking to each other. If you have a different worldview from me we can't talk about it because by doing so we're invalidating each other's existence. Which is unfortunate because there are a lot of ideas it might be useful to talk about. Like if you met a racist you can't really call him wrong because you'd be invalidating his existence.
I don't think the people who use the term care to understand it that way. They wish to understand it in a way that allows them to invalidate the existence of others but ban the invalidation of their own existence. Meaning, "you can't challenge the ideas I'm attached to, but I can challenge yours." This seems like a serious failure of empathy to me.
The other way of getting past this is by untying ideas and identities. Some might call this an aspect of maturity - the ability to talk coherently about an idea without getting personal about it. Alas, it seems like we've been moving backward in this regard.
