I'm not sure I understand this as a response to Yoshie's critique of NGO's as playing a legitimating role in current structures of informal sovereignty as a mediator. Yoshie is offering a critique of the structure of the NGO, rather than the concept of 'sexual self-determination.' I suspect she would have issues with it, linking it with abstract liberalism, but this isn't what she says in the post.
Coincidentally, Hardt and Negri are considerably less sanguine about the nation-state itself, and have a pretty serious critique of the continued usefulness of theories of imperialism. Robert Wood
>> At this level, discourse of human rights, conceived
> ahistorically and applied selectively in doxa, works
> against national sovereignty and self-determination
> and facilitates imperialism.
>
> But is advocating for people's ability to engage in
> sexual self-expression any different than advocating
> for their right to breathe? If regimes have the right
> to self-determination, don't people possess a similar
> right to practice sexual self-determination? Sexual
> imperialism is a horrific practice.
>
> I once read somewhere that human beings have some basic
> drives: for water, food, salt and sex. It seems clear
> that any governmental authority should not interfere with
> but rather facilitate people's efforts to fulfill these
> needs. To suffocate a person's sexuality can be as
> devastating as placing hand over her mouth and nose and
> pressing down.
>
>> Such humanitarian NGOs [e.g., Amnesty International,
> Oxfam, Medecins sans Frontieres, and other orgs for relief
> work and human rights protection] are in effect (even if
> this runs counter to the intentions of the participants)
> some of the most powerful pacific weapons of the new world
> order -- the charitable campaigns and the mendicant orders
> of the Empire.
>
> What H&N miss is that the struggle for freedom of sexual
> self-expression also disrupts the empire. Manifestations
> of sexuality always threaten whatever authority structures
> happen to be in place at any given moment. This is why
> power elites always get around to regulating sexuality and
> the uses to which a person wants to put her body.
>
>> I have argued against activists and intellectuals
> participating in or giving credibility to them in any
> capacity.
>
> But advocates for sexual expression cannot give credibility
> to any authority that hates them in the first place. If you
> are advocating for sex you are in opposition to authority
> until that day comes when the authority stops regulating
> sexuality and other bodily expressions/manifestations.
>
> Sex activists are always in the process of destabilization.
>
> Brian
>
>
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