Self-Determination
Self-determination is not a life that has to please you, but one’s own principles, one’s own rules. Not a label you attach to yourself to make everything look good, but a stance that comes from within and justifies itself inwardly.
Whether it suits others is not the prerequisite. It is not necessary at all.
That sounds simple, but it is not. Because almost every discussion about self-determination eventually turns into a discussion about whether another person’s decision was the right one — measured against standards that are not their own. People evaluate the decision, not the freedom to make it. And that is exactly where the problem begins.
This is precisely what the debate about the headscarf is about. It is one of those examples that shows how quickly “I don’t think this is right” becomes “This is not self-determined” — as if one logically followed from the other.
Of course, the objection is not entirely unfounded. People never make decisions in a vacuum. Family, religion, culture, social expectations, and role models shape us. The question of how free a decision can be under such influences is therefore legitimate.
But it does not follow that every decision made within a tradition is automatically unfree. Otherwise, one would have to place a large part of human life under general suspicion. Most of our convictions, values, and desires do not emerge independently of our surroundings. Yet we do not generally deny people the ability to make their own decisions.
If a woman wants to wear a headscarf because of her faith — who could seriously and plausibly deny her that choice? Who has the authority to say: “That is not free, that is not self-determined”?
But criminal law only marks the places where the state is allowed to intervene. It is not the boundary of restriction itself.
There is the woman who is financially dependent on her husband — no threat, no violation of the law, just a bank account she cannot access. There is the family that forbids nothing but forgives nothing either — a glance, a silence at the dinner table that moves more than any order ever could. There is the social environment that does not force compliance but simply waits until a person gives up on their own.
None of this is criminal. None of it can be reported. And that is precisely why it disappears so easily from the debate — because we seem to take only those things seriously that can also be punished.
This is the grey area. It has no sharp edge, no statute, no point at which one can say: this is where the boundary lies. It escapes proof without escaping reality.
Those who ignore it because it cannot be squeezed into criminal law make things too easy for themselves. But those who use it as proof that every decision made under such conditions must be unfree make things equally easy — just in the opposite direction.
The grey area demands something more uncomfortable than a verdict: it demands that we look without immediately deciding what it is we have seen.
The desire to protect often does not arise from malice but from the experience that freedom can indeed be restricted. People are pressured, manipulated, threatened, or socially sanctioned. It would be naïve to deny that.
The difficulty begins where protection and paternalism merge into one another. Because anyone who fundamentally denies people the ability to judge their own situation takes away the very thing they claim to defend: their self-determination.
Both things are true, and both must be allowed to remain true without cancelling each other out: there is real coercion, and it should be prosecuted, not relativised. And there is real choice, and it should be respected, not treated with blanket suspicion. Anyone who pits one against the other — protection against freedom — has already lost both.
This tension is not limited to the headscarf. It runs through almost every field in which self-determination is at stake. Women’s rights in general, LGBTQ+IA rights, religious freedom, questions of lifestyle or identity — again and again the line between protection and paternalism is negotiated, between genuine danger and the assumption that someone cannot properly assess their own situation.
I used to see much of this as belonging to the same drawer. A collective category that threw everything sounding like freedom into a single container.
That worked, of course.
But if you look more closely, that classification does not carry very far. Because freedom is not a group. It is not a camp. It is not a label. It is what connects all of these debates in the first place.
Put more sharply: anyone who takes freedom seriously must not lock it inside groups.
Freedom is not a party membership card. It is not a label. It is the standard against which every social order must be measured.
Women’s rights, LGBTQ+IA rights, freedom of religion, democratic rights — these are not merely group interests. They are expressions of a claim to freedom.
The common denominator is not the group. The common denominator is the self-determination of the individual.
Democratic values do not unite people because they sort them into categories. They unite people because they presuppose equal freedom and equal dignity.
And in the end, self-determination also means not saving people against their will.
That does not mean celebrating every decision uncritically. Decisions may be questioned. Traditions may be criticised. Religions may be discussed. But the mere fact that a decision does not fit one’s own worldview does not make it unfree.
Anyone who takes freedom seriously must tolerate the fact that it may look different than expected.
And anyone who truly takes women seriously should not begin by talking about their symbolism.
Should not begin by talking about their headscarf.
Should talk about their autonomy.
Written on June 18, 2026 at 14:10. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.