Yeah I think that's a really good parallel situation. As a white female I may have experienced a few discriminatory things, but it is /not/ the same as racism all my life. But because I *want* (with the best of intentions) to empathize and stuff I could conceivably try to say "oh that's like when this xxx thing happened to me." But it's really /not/ the same. But it is in the same family. But - yeah. :)

So yeah - I take the feminist view that the people best able to describe their experience are the people who've had it. Of course with multiplicity that's tricky - who in our system is going to speak for us? :)