Libertarians claim that self-ownership plays an essential foundational role in justifying strong private property rights. Others, who do not want to be committed to strong libertarian property rights, often reject that there is a valid claim to self-ownership. I argue that we do not need to reject self-ownership in order to resist strong libertarian property rights. The link between self-ownership and property rights in external objects in not well established. It is possible, I argue, to endorse self-ownership while also denying that self-ownership plays a foundational role in generating libertarian property rights. In addition, there are weighty independent reasons to think that self-ownership is morally important. There is no need to throw the self-ownership baby out with the libertarian bathwater. This recognition insulates self-ownership against several recent criticisms that have been levelled against it. The Nozickean insight that self-ownership and property are connected is not completely mistaken, though. There is an important connection between the development of property rights and self-ownership, but the relationship is more complicated and elusive than most libertarians assume. Self-ownership does help to generate private property rights, but it does so in an indirect way by acting as a reliable pre-institutional signal that helps create asymmetric property institutions. Self-ownership is a fundamental right, one that is instrumental but not foundational in justifying rights in external things. Non-libertarians and libertarians alike can embrace self-ownership wholeheartedly without thereby committing themselves to libertarian property institutions.