Pass the Mic: Not All Voices Are Yours to Borrow

In a world where hashtags can spark revolutions and social justice is often curated for timelines, the temptation to speak on behalf of others — especially the most marginalized — is very real. But when feminism forgets to listen, when it replaces lived experience with borrowed voice, it risks losing both its politics and its power. This blog reflects on the ethical fault lines of representation, the need for intersectionality, and why all women — privileged or vulnerable — must be allowed to speak their own truths, not someone else’s version of it. Read on....

Let’s admit it: in the age of performative politics and social media algorithms, it’s tempting — really tempting — to speak on behalf of the most marginalized. It makes us look aware, evolved, radical. Sometimes, it even fetches applause.

But here’s a hard truth that feminism must keep returning to: when we speak for someone else without living that truth, we risk turning activism into ventriloquism (the ability to speak without moving your lips so that your voice seems to be coming from someone or something else).

You’ve seen it. The well-meaning academic talking about the trauma of Dalit women without once citing a Dalit scholar. The non-Adivasi artist curating an entire exhibition on Adivasi memory while erasing Adivasi voices from the room. The privileged ally offering heartfelt 'solidarity' but never stepping back to pass the mic.

Sure, it may be done with good intentions. But good intentions don’t always lead to just outcomes.

Lived Experience is Not a Footnote

Here’s the thing: lived experience isn’t optional. It’s foundational.

You cannot guess what it feels like to be excluded from a temple, to carry your pain in silence because language fails you, to navigate gender alongside caste, class, or disability.

You can empathize. You can amplify. But you cannot replace.

Feminism loses its edge — and its ethics — when it turns into a ventriloquist act, speaking about and over people instead of listening to them.

All Stories Need Telling — Even the ‘Privileged’ Ones

Now here comes the counterpoint we don’t say out loud often enough: just because you’re privileged doesn’t mean you don’t have a story worth telling.

A middle-class woman’s workplace anxiety, an upper-middle-class woman’s silent domestic battles, an elite woman’s negotiation with family, ambition, and guilt — none of these stories are trivial. They are part of the feminist archive too. When a so-called 'privileged' woman speaks about her life — in all its mess and nuance — it is not a betrayal of more vulnerable women's realities. It is a necessary expansion of feminist thought.

Because feminism was never about gatekeeping whose pain is purest.

It’s Not Either/Or. It’s And.

The false binary we often fall into — that talking about the issues of middle-class or elite women dilutes the struggle of Dalit women, transwomen, fisherwomen, or working-class women — is itself a patriarchal trap. It reduces feminism to a competition of suffering.

But patriarchy doesn’t discriminate in its reach. It just adapts.

And dismantling it requires all hands — and all voices — on deck.

This is why intersectionality matters. And this is also why we must allow every woman to narrate her own world, rather than trying to wear someone else’s pain like a costume. It may win you likes, applause, and a viral tweet — but it doesn’t replace the raw authenticity of someone telling their own truth.

So, Whose Voice Is Missing?

That’s the real question.

Instead of asking who’s allowed to speak, let’s ask:

Who is missing from the conversation?

Who’s being spoken about but not heard?

And how can we make space — not just to represent, but to receive and respect?

Feminism needs many voices. Loud ones. Quiet ones. Angry ones. Joyful ones. Rural, urban, queer, caste-oppressed, privileged. All of them. Not as substitutes, not as saviors, not as spectators — but as storytellers of their own lives.

Because if feminism is about liberation, it must first liberate the right to speak for oneself.