Self identity as pregnant.

[FOJN]

Has this been a thing for a while and I missed it? What does it even mean?

twitter.com/BCGovNews/status/1482144197155057664?s=20

It's a way of normalising and validating the term 'self identify'.

It's odd - maternity care up until your first midwife appointment is basically based on people self-identifying as pregnant.

I called the midwife team after a positive pregnancy test and was booked in for scans etc 2 months down the line. I also needed to tell my employer I was pregnant (because of workplace risks) before I had had any proper medical confirmation that I actually was pregnant. It felt like I could just be making it up - or that someone could pretend to be pregnant for about 3 months without anyone challenging them.

If you spend any amount of time on twitter, it's quite obvious there are quite a few male people who get into quite detailed and lengthy pregnancy role plays irl in which they expect all women around them to play along, and will get quite ragey when they don't.
I came across someone doing it in FB group a few weeks ago. They claimed to have miscarried previously and now were worried about the current one. The profile picture was heavily filtered so I don't think most of the women who sympathised and shared advice, and occasionally quite personal and painful stories were aware.
The only reason to say 'self-identify' is to pacify the pregnancy role players. Everyone who is genuinely pregnant will either know it or take a pregnancy test to confirm.

@InvisibleDragon

It's odd - maternity care up until your first midwife appointment is basically based on people self-identifying as pregnant.

I called the midwife team after a positive pregnancy test and was booked in for scans etc 2 months down the line. I also needed to tell my employer I was pregnant (because of workplace risks) before I had had any proper medical confirmation that I actually was pregnant. It felt like I could just be making it up - or that someone could pretend to be pregnant for about 3 months without anyone challenging them.

I'm a social worker and in my student days on placement we took a cushion to case conference - a women self reporting as pregnant, attending done midwife appointments but no scans and didn't let them touch her but the bump kept growing! She wasn't actually pregnant at all.

Oh no Socialcarenope, I can just imagine that happening - how awkward!

It goes to show how there is always an edge case where someone does something odd / unexpected. We need our health / social care systems to be able to manage that.

As other posters have said, there are already trans women who engage in role-play / fantasising about pregnancy (and miscarriage!) on social media. It doesn't take much imagination to see someone doing the same thing with maternity care. What is a midwife going to do if a trans woman (who has changed their sex/gender marker on medical notes to female) insists that they are pregnant/miscarrying and demands an urgent ultrasound?

It is somewhat tempting to think that anyone insisting (when not in grip of a severe mental disturbance) on receiving health care interventions meant only for the opposite sex - particularly from a pandemic-crushed health care system where care is free at point of use should get interventions for the opposite sex*: female catheters, for example. And if said interventions cause injury they can have the [near-]universal female experience of being expected to simply put up with difference/pain/injury caused by prolapse &/or as part of the post-partum fun. Bonus!

I personally disagree that n+1 incidents should be the point at which people have to acknowledge there is an issue &/or for moves to be made towards resolution. The TRA side (a considerable number of them at least) apparently employ that standard though - would they be happy with it being applied to prevent sex & gender (if people wanted) both being recorded in medical notes? “No, there’s no problem, as you told us for years women are all exactly the same, TWAW, all women get to put “F” in the little box on the form… someone died you say? Because of a what? Some kind of biological difference? I think you’ll find that those are not important. Must be a tragic one-off that probably never-happened anyway.” Of course at the moment this system TRAs wanted - combined with not taking responsibility for ensuring clear communication - is presented as a form of oppression (check the headline on that last link…)

• this is NOT transphobic: ANYONE demanding health care that they know they do not & cannot require deserves All The Imaginary Tortures of our collective imaginations, regardless of who they are & how they identify

@FOJN

I've just used Google translate on the French version, it says:

Dial 1 833 838-2323 and identify yourself as pregnant.

this makes much more sense so why is the English version written so badly.

If I had to take a guess, it's a case where whoever wrote it just popped in a phrase that is very common to hear or read these days, so it's just in their ready vocabulary and sounded right. Lots of people just pick up whatever language is on trend unconsciously and start to include it in their own speech.

I think the author may have been a French speaker and attempted a direct translation.
I'm guessing there was no review.
I'm leaning towards honest mistake rather than targeted word placement.

The targeted word absence is there though...

@Barbarantia

I think the author may have been a French speaker and attempted a direct translation. I'm guessing there was no review. I'm leaning towards honest mistake rather than targeted word placement.

The targeted word absence is there though...

This. s'identifier in French means both "identify yourself" (factual things, e.g. "if you are a British citizen, identify yourself to the consulate") and "self-identify".

I'd guess that it's a French speaker or hurried translator, who's probably heard the English term "self-identify" and not realised we'd normally use a different translation in English.

I'd guess that it's a French speaker or hurried translator, who's probably heard the English term "self-identify" and not realised we'd normally use a different translation in English.

Why would there be hurried French translations happening in Canadian government public health communications when French is the second language of the country and everything official is in English and French? I don’t think there’s a huge amount of “not realising” going on tbh.

The only issue with this poster that I see is “pregnant people”. The “self identify” bit means you don’t need medical proof of being pregnant to access the service.

Just because the language is the same, and means the same thing (no doctors note required, we believe you) doesn’t mean the subject matter is connected to other things you can self-identify as.

It simply means no medical proof of pregnancy required.

I'm a midwife in BC. It's bonkers here and the government is leading the way with their language choices.

The only issue with this poster that I see is “pregnant people”. The “self identify” bit means you don’t need medical proof of being pregnant to access the service.

Agree with this. Someone thought it was a good way of saying "you don't need medical proof and you won't be challenged". It's ridiculous wording but I think it's meant to be helpful. Pregnant people on the other hand

Giving the benefit of the doubt, it is possible that "self identify" could be the standard phrasing used in Canada where we would say "self-refer." And that it had been for a long time, before anyone started talking about self identifing as genders or anything, and sounds normal and understandable to Canadians.

But if not, it does make me think... In Scotland pregnant women get free dental care. I wonder if they have a similar scheme in BC and if anyone can self-identify as pregnant for that?

No, self-refer would be quite common language here.

But it is entirely possible that it is an issue with poor translation, maybe even a machine translation that didn't get much more than a cursory look-over. Health care is not a federal responsibility and has little to do with the national government. It's provincial, and BC is not an officially bilingual province - this material was probably produced by some sort of health authority within BC and could have come out of a fairly small office. Normally I would expect the English to be better in this situation and an error in the French, but you never know, it could have been a Francophone who wrote it.

But I'm still inclined to think it is probably just a matter of someone using a phrase that has become very common slightly inappropriately.