I tend to have a strong individual sense of self with loyalty to immediate friends and family. I also consider myself an "artist", but consider it a nebulous term that doesn't convey much specific information, and I change within that broad role, so I'm not a specific type of artist. I've also identified humorously as a "cat lady", but it's to laugh off hardship and express that I love the animals in my care.
I don't identity firmly with a religion, political party, nationality, race, sexual orientation, etc. I consider myself female, but don't try to be one or have an abstract notion to live up to that is strong or defined. I've only dated men, but don't have a heterosexual identity because life is always changing and requiring different things, and I had childhood crushes on women. I've voted more recently on the Left, but I feel free to move about the political spectrum in response to what I understand to be ethical and reasonable positions. I would never tattoo a politician on my body be loyal to one for the sake of it. I live in the U.S. but don't have ego invested in that identity and am not offended by criticisms because I just happen to live here. I work at a church, but am agnostic with a value of respecting people's beliefs and ideals, but feel it unrealistic that I would know the answers to the nature of reality. My grandmother was from Poland and I bought one Polish dress and once thought I should buy a Polish cookbook out of curiosity and have Irish blood and happen to play an Irish instrument, but I didn't plan on that correlation. None of these intentionally influence my daily life.
Really I feel disconnected, but when I hear groups of people with a collective identity proposing policy to support their lives, I just think its general politics. I see it as a population with a bunch of smaller groups with different needs that sometimes conflict, so they all bring their issues to the table and everyone tries to sort it out. I value freedom so appreciate not having only one group bulldoze everyone - whether they are the majority or minority. We need really basic public policies that apply the people in general and then allow for as much private freedoms as possible.
This is an interesting question, and one to which I have been giving some thought as of late. Identity, in the meaning of a sense of self, comes from a combination of our upbringing and our choices. We are born into a culture, a socioeconomic group, a religion, with physical characteristics like skin color, height, sex characteristics, and possibly disabilities. These factors may become central to our sense of self, either because we embrace and value them, or because we constantly feel constrained and limited by them. Even if we try to change or overcome them, we are often associated with them even years later. Someone raised Jewish, for instance, might feel no affinity for Jewish culture and even convert to a different faith, but may still become a target of antisemitism. Transgender people who have done everything possible to live out their true sense of self are now being expected to conform to an assumption based on a physical shell with which they never identified.
The second part of our identity comes from what we choose in life. This includes our career or profession, avocations, hobbies, political affiliations, even relationships like becoming a parent, or a mentor. Religion should be included here, but the influence of our upbringing can be hard to shake, and not just for those like Jews whose religion is closely tied to their culture.
When "people with a collective identity" are proposing policy to support their lives, it, too, falls into one of two categories. The first is directly tied to that part of their identity. For example, teachers asking for smaller classes and less administrative burdens, so they can focus more attention on each student; college students wanting lower tuition, and loan forgiveness; members of a religion wanting time off for religious events; or Latinos wanting Spanish added to emergency signs. The second involves members of a group asking for something everyone would want, as when those same teachers ask for better pay and benefits, or black people ask for health care comparable to what whites get, or gay people demand marriage and adoption rights, or simply a cake from the neighborhood bakery. These concerns are often dismissed as the affected group wanting "special rights", when really they just want what everyone else has. If they could get it, just like everyone else, there would be nothing for them to ask.
If we look more closely, though, even the first group of policy wishes fall into that category, too. Other occupations don't deal with students in a classroom, but everyone wants to be able to do their job without being overburdened, denied necessary resources, or diverted to other tasks. No one wants the cost of a critical resource like education (or medical care, or food . . . ) to be prohibitive. Everyone wants to be able to observe important life occasions, whether in a faith group, a family, or elsewhere. And everyone wants access to the information they need to make important decisions - like how to exit a theater on fire. These universal needs and wants will manifest differently for different groups and different individuals because we are not all the same. We can focus on the differences to divide and marginalize, or understand the underlying human commonality, to include and unite.
