How Undue Shaming Hurts

Although Elena Kelly now identifies as a female, she was born in a male body. She writes over at Salon of a time in her past when she made a child with a half-sister she first met as an adult.

Even though I was growing to love them all, one half-sister and I hit it off especially well. She was an “out” lesbian, only a little younger than me, and our likes and dislikes, our level of education, and so many of our interests matched that we found it quite easy to talk on the phone for hours and never run out of things to talk about…I stayed at her lovely home near the ocean and we went out a lot, going to the beach, nice restaurants, and just hanging out and talking about how our lives had unfolded. We were completely unaware that we were falling in love…

That event started out as innocent play but it became quite serious and that night we crossed a line we never intended to cross. It was the beginning of so much shame and sadness, as well as untold pain for our families and those friends of ours who truly cared for us and loved us. It was stupid and selfish on our part, and we have both paid an enormous price for the foolish choice we made that night. We were adults (I was 34 and she 33) and that night we slept together and she became pregnant with our daughter.

It sounds like they were so right for each other. It is too bad that American society works to suppress this sort of thing, breaking up a family. There should have been no shame. Without the artificial and arbitrary restrictions of society intruding, they could have been happy together. Instead, they let the intruders break them apart. You can read of the tragic results yourself.