Quotes About Identity

Expectations that black directors have to make black films about black subject matter are, to me, kind of absurd.

My straight friends accept I'm gay but they forget that some people don't. Even now, if I go into a party, people don't usually assume I'm gay, so you have to keep coming out. And if you say you've got a film with a gay subject matter, you can sometimes see people's eyes going, 'Oh! OK!'

There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world.

It's factual to say I am a bilateral-below-the-knee amputee. I think it's subjective opinion as to whether or not I am disabled because of that. That's just me.

Those objecting to the concept of race argue that the taxonomic definitions are arbitrary and subjective.

I sometimes feel like a British writer more so than I feel like an American writer. But I think that has to do with my subjective understanding of what it means to be either of those things.

Where a country lies is a subjective decision and only in part a product of its own desire. Much, if not most, is determined by what others believe about it.

As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself.

We hide so well. This is the bottom line: how hidden is male subjectivity? Name five books where male subjectivity is produced in an honest way.

Identitarianism assumes that people are condemned to identify with the positive (ethnic/ gender/ nationalistic) predicates they possess, as if their subjectivity were exhausted by those properties. Exactly the opposite is the case: the authentic dimension of subjectivity consists not in any positive identity but in that which makes identifications.

The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror.

Our subjectivity is so completely our own.

Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself.

Nobody in France would ever say 'He's a Jewish novelist' or 'She's a black novelist,' even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a 'Gay Studies' section.

I look for subjects who have stories to tell - who are looking to tell something.

History is of all subjects the one which is most engaged with people's perceptions of themselves, identity, politics, all those things which shape the modern world.

I really wanted to feel strong, I wanted my subjects to feel strong, but I didn't know how to do that. It's really hard for, I guess, every woman to not internalize misogyny. I just learned as I went on how to best capture my subjects without objectifying them.

It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me.

There's a lot of influences that I have from Detroit that are subliminal. I mean, I spent the first 10 years of my life there. My mom and dad were born and raised there, so a lot of that rubbed off on me. When I get angry, sometimes a Detroit accent comes out.

I do not make any apologies for my manner or personality. I come from a long line of very strong, black African-American women who neither bend nor bow. I haven't had very good modeling in submission.

For so many years, I was trying to beat my hair into submission, trying to get it to look like someone else's hair, and I didn't know how. I remember going through a phase where I even put beer in my hair, because I was told that would make it smooth and curly.

'Al Jamilat' is not just feminist. It's an album with songs that feature women: women who are in love, rebellious women, political activists, women who are more submissive, women who are in charge.

We're coming into a new generation of women where there's the submissive woman, and then our reaction to it is, 'No, I'm a man, too, and I'm masculine,' and then we fight against it, which isn't the answer, either.

At which point should we let go and do what we want to do, and when should we submit to rules? Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.