“Mistresses of Their Own Destiny”: Group Rights, Gender, and Realistic Rights of Exit

Abstract

Many recent arguments for rights or exemptions for religious or other cultural groups that may not themselves be liberal are based on liberal premises—whether the central liberal value be individual autonomy or tolerance for diversity of ways of life. Any consistent defense of group rights or exemptions that is based on liberal premises has to ensure that at least one individual right—the right to exit one’s group of origin—trumps any group right. What this entails will be explored later, but for several reasons, the claim itself seems prima facie incontrovert-