Tag Archives: Suicide

Commentary

Dawn Stefanowicz explains her experience being raised by a gay parent

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*** WARNING: This post is definitely for grown-ups only! ***

I was listening to the latest Dr. J podcast on “Why Marriage Matters”, and I heard about a woman named Dawn Stefanowicz, who was raised by her gay father in Toronto.

So, I looked around and found this interview with Dawn posted on MercatorNet. This is mature subject matter.

Intro:

Gay marriage and gay adoption are being fiercely debated in a number of countries. Usually these issues are framed as a human rights issue. But whose rights? Patrick Meagher, MercatorNet’s contributing editor in Canada, recently interviewed a woman who was raised by a homosexual father. She feels that her rights as a child were completely ignored.

Dawn Stefanowicz (www.DawnStefanowicz.com) grew up in Toronto. Now in her 40s, she has written a book, Out From Under: Getting Clear of the Wreckage of a Sexually Disordered Home, to be released later this year. Stefanowicz has now been married for 22 years, is raising a family, and also works as an accountant. She has also testified about same-sex marriage in Washington and Ottawa.

Sample:

MercatorNet: How did you feel about what was going on around you?

Stefanowicz: You become used to it and desensitised. I was told at eight years old not to talk about this but I knew that something was wrong. I was not thinking “this is right or wrong” but I was disturbed by what I was experiencing. I was unhappy, fearful, anxious and confused. I was not allowed to tell my father that his lifestyle upset me. You can be four-years-old and questioning, “Where is Daddy?” You sense women are not valued. You think Daddy doesn’t have time for you or Daddy is too busy to play a game with you. All this is hard because as a child this is the only experience you have.

MercatorNet: How did this affect your relationship with others?

Stefanowicz: I had a hard time concentrating in school on day-to-day subjects and with peers. I felt insecure. I was already stressed out by an early age. I’m now in my 40s. You’re looking at life-long issues. There is a lot of prolonged and unresolved grief in this kind of home environment and with what you witness in the subcultures.

It took me until I was into my 20s and 30s, after making major life choices, to begin to realise how being raised in this environment had affected me. Unfortunately, it was not until my father, his sexual partners and my mother had died, that I was free to speak publicly about my experiences.

And:

MercatorNet: Why do so few children speak out?

Stefanowicz: You’re terrified. Absolutely terrified. Children who open up these family secrets are dependent on parents for everything. You carry the burden that you have to keep secrets. You learn to put on an image publicly of the happy family that is not reality. With same-sex legislation, children are further silenced. They believe there is no safe adult they can go to.

I noticed that Bill Muehlenberg has an even more controversial review of Dawn’s book about her childhood, too. When I was doing research on these issues, I read Dr. Jeffrey Satinover’s “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth” and Dr. Joseph Nicolosi’s “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality“. But I think I am going to buy Dawn’s book, too. It sounds like a tough read, but it may be necessary to understand what is really at stake, so my views can be formed by real data.

NOTE: Comments to this post will be strictly filtered in accordance with Obama’s hate crimes bill.

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Commentary

Barbara Kay asks whether men or women commit suicide more often

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Here’s a nice column by Barbara Kay.

Excerpt:

…men, of course, are far more likely to commit suicide than women altogether, although the fact is rarely brought to public attention as a matter for special concern, even when it would be appropriate to do so. Three students at Cornell University in New York State in the last month alone committed suicide by jumping off a bridge on the campus into a deep gorge. These were not “cries for help” — they were irrevocable decisions to die. The students were male. Yet Cornell president David Skorton said that “… suicide among young people is a national health crisis.”

Well, it isn’t a crisis amongst young people, but it is a crisis amongst young males. In Canada over 80% of suicides are male (77% in the U.S.). Suicides amongst men rise dramatically after separation or divorce, especially amongst men deprived of their family home and children, while suicide rates amongst women remain flat.

If the figures were reversed, and women were committing suicide at the rates of men, we can be sure that it would be considered a national crisis, one on which a great deal of money, media attention and authentic concern would be lavished. As of now, the only research being carried out on male suicide is being done by activists in the fathers’ rights movement.

I don’t always agree with Barbara Kay, but I like this column.

Polemics

What is self-refutation and what are some examples of self-refutation?

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Why, self-refutation is the most wonderful thing in the world, next to irony.

Look at this post from Thinking Matters New Zealand.

First, they define what self-refutation is:

In his Introduction to Logic, Harry Gensler defines a self-refuting statement as “[A] statement that makes negative claims so sweeping that it ends up denying itself.” [1] In other words, it results when an argument or position is undercut by its own criteria  (An example of this would be saying, “I cannot speak a word of English” in English).

Then they have a list of examples of self-refutation. Here are some:

  1. Truth does not exist (Is that a true statement?)
  2. Nothing is absolute (Is that absolutely true?)
  3. I do not exist (You must exist to deny that you exist)
  4. Science is the only way to know (Can you scientifically prove that?)
  5. Only what can be perceived by the five senses exists (Can you prove that by the five senses?)

Go here to read the rest.

I work in the software engineering industry, so we have a lot of nerds running around who believe all kinds of crazy things that are self-refuting. There is a lot of skepticism of the laws of logic and analytical philosophy. A self-refuting statement that I hear a lot is: “Don’t judge me, because it’s wrong to judge other people”. And I just ask them: “Well if it’s wrong to judge other people, then why are you judging me?”. (Actually, I noticed that MandM has a post up about judging right now!)

I wonder if my regular readers have ever heard any self-refuting statements? If you know any more, leave it in the comments.

On another topic, it turns out that the author of this post on self-refutation blogs at Rational Thoughts. I added their blog to the blog roll. Check them out.