#Robina Asti

[yourdailyqueer]

Robina Asti (deceased)

Gender: Transgender woman

Sexuality: N/A

DOB: 7 April 1921  

RIP: 12 March 2021

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Flight instructor, activist, veteran, makeup artist

Note: Her advocacy changed government rules to allow transgender people to receive Social Security survivor benefits. In July 2020, Asti was awarded two Guinness World Records for being the oldest active pilot and active flight instructor.

#Robina Asti #lgbt history #trans history #lgbt rights #lgbt #transgender #trans woman #1921 #rip #historical #white #teacher #activist #veteran #makeup artist #pilot #popular #popular post #300

[avakining]

ID: A Mastodon post from @[email protected]. It includes a picture of an elderly white woman wearing a pink shirt and pale blue cardigan. The post reads:

On July 23, 2020, at the age of 99, Robina Asti gave her last flight lesson at Riverside Municipal Airport in California, setting a new record for world's oldest flight instructor. She would pass away peacefully in her sleep less than a year later at the home of her daughter, where she had moved during the Covid-19 pandemic.

During her more than 70-year aeronautics career, she was stationed at Wake Island, and later Midway Island in the run up to WWII, where she flew reconnaissance planes in order to detect Japanese ships. She was later promoted to test pilot, and finally discharged after the war with the rank of lieutenant commander.

Then she began teaching others to fly.

After transition, she became chairperson of a women's aviation organization known as The Ninety-Nines. Working with that group, she successfully petitioned the FAA to change their rules for women seeking a pilot's license, dropping the requirement for a highly invasive internal physical exam.

#trans ppl have always existed <3

[equalityspeaks]

Robina Asti, the transgender woman who flew missions as a pilot in World War II before transitioning in the 1970s, passed away peacefully in her sleep on Friday, March 12.

“Recognized as a 2020 Out 100 honoree, Asti became an activist in her 90s, setting a precedent that rewrote the government’s policy for transgender widow benefits and creating the Cloud Dancers Foundation to support the “invisible” members of the LGBTQ+ community.”

Rest in Power, Robina 🏳️‍⚧️

#robina asti #rest in power #lgbtq #trans activist #trans community #trans is beautiful #trans

[tranxiolytic]

She was a veteran. A tireless trans pioneer. A flight instructor. A “little jerk” (her words). A person willing to take on government agencies. A Guinness World record holder hopeful. A TedX speaker. And the founder of an LGBT+ outreach group.

To her family, she was “mum” and “grandmother”, a woman who “lived her life fully and in vivid colour”, her daughter, Coca Astey, told the publication.

“The kid from New York grew up to chase rainbows, hurricanes, and travel across purple mountains as an aviator. She worked with artists and political leaders and as an activist for the LGBT+ community.”

#robina asti #trans #lgbtq

[crossdreamers]

At age 99, transgender woman becomes the world's oldest active pilot and flight instructor

Robina Asti: Transgender TrailblazerABC has a wonderful report on Roberta Asti, A 99-year-old Riverside County woman is now in the record books as the world's oldest flight instructor and active pilot.

Robina says she wanted to show seniors are strong, vital, and can still contribute. "I love getting people to experience what it's like to lift off this Earth," she said. "It is so good."

Video here:

What is truly strange, though, is that they do not mention that she is transgender. I am not sure whether this is a good thing, them seeing trans women as women now, or a bad thing, as in trying to avoid an embarrassing topic.

You know what? I will go for the first option. TV  news often choose to sensationalize trans lives, so I will see this as a sign of respect. For their wide audience it should not matter if she is trans or cis.

For readers of a transgender news site like this one, however, this does matter, because we need role models like Robina.

Here are some other stories about Robina:

This incredible 95-year-old trans woman flight instructor found love late in life– only to be denied social security benefits by the government because she’s not cisgender

Robina Asti: Transgender Trailblazer

#trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtqa #flight instructor #pilot #mtf

[askanonbinary]

i know that this is article is two years old at this point but i still find it extremely inspiring. remember it’s never too late to come out or be yourself! 

-stevie

#mod stevie

[blairemclaren]

Robina Asti Death - Obituary : Robina Asti Has Died

Robina Asti Death - Obituary, Funeral, Cause Of Death Our hearts are with the loved ones of Robina Asti...click link to learn more

Robina Asti Death – Obituary, Funeral, Cause Of Death Our hearts are with the loved ones of Robina Asti, who made history when she successfully fought for her husband’s Social Security benefits, and last year became the world’s oldest active flight instructor. She died earlier this month at the age of 99. Through a social media announcement, DeadDeath learned on March 24th, 2021, about the death…

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[kiramoore626]

Robina Asti (1921–2021), WWII veteran and transgender advocate

Robina Asti (1921–2021), WWII veteran and transgender advocate

Robina Asti (1921–2021), WWII veteran and transgender advocate Asti served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, installing radios in aircraft in the Pacific Theater. After the war, she operated a supper club with friends and later worked for mutual fund company E.W. Axe. In was in the 1970s that Asti began her transition, and she later married Norwood Patton. After his death in 2012, she filed…

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[freenewstoday]

New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2021/03/21/robina-asti-who-made-history-on-the-ground-and-in-the-air-dies-at-99/

Robina Asti, Who Made History on the Ground and in the Air, Dies at 99

Robina Asti, a World War II veteran and mutual-fund executive who inspired a generation of transgender people in the 2010s with her successful fight for her husband’s Social Security benefits, and who just last year became the world’s oldest active flight instructor, died on March 12 in San Diego. She was 99.

Her death, at the home of her daughter Coca Astey, was confirmed by Ms. Astey.

Ms. Asti had been living quietly as a woman for nearly 40 years when she applied for survivor benefits from the Social Security Administration in 2012, a few months after her husband died. It took a year for the agency to deny her application, on the grounds that she was not legally a woman at the time of her marriage.

Though most of her government-issued documents, including her pilot’s license and even her Social Security card, recognized her as a woman, the agency’s determination of survivor benefits was based on her birth certificate, which identified her as a man.

Ms. Asti was livid. She searched online for help and found Lambda Legal, a nonprofit law firm that specializes in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

“It was an amazing day when she walked into our offices,” M. Dru Levasseur, who ran Lambda’s transgender rights practice at the time and now works for the National LGBT Bar Association and Foundation, said in a phone interview. “We could feel her energy, her anger at the system.”

Lambda took the government to court in June 2013. Eight months later, on Valentine’s Day 2014, Ms. Asti checked her bank account and found a large deposit: nearly two years of back pay from the Social Security Administration.

Not only did Ms. Asti win her case; the administration changed its rule regarding transgender survivors — and the documentation requirements for proving one’s gender in the first place.

Ms. Asti’s fight made her a celebrity in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, at a time when transgender rights were just beginning to be a national issue. She embraced her newfound role — giving speeches, marching in pride parades and simply living a full life as an older transgender woman. In November 2020, Out magazine named her to its annual “Out 100” list.

“Her telling her story had a huge impact for the transgender community,” Mr. Levasseur said. “Because of violence against transgender people, many of us don’t get to grow old, but here she was, enjoying her life in her 90s.”

Ms. Asti’s greatest enjoyment came in the air. A licensed pilot and instructor since her 20s, she continued to fly every weekend well into her 90s, traveling from her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Teterboro Airport in northern New Jersey.

She moved to San Diego at the beginning of the pandemic, having lived most of her life in New York. She took her last flight, with a student, in July, and was in the process of establishing a Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest active pilot and oldest flight instructor.

“What do I like about flying?” she said in “Flying Solo,” a 2018 documentary about her life. “I guess it’s being a bird.”

Robina Fedora Asti was born on April 7, 1921, in Manhattan and raised in Greenwich Village. Her father, David Astey, was a featherweight boxer who had Anglicized his surname after his manager said he needed to sound less Italian. Ms. Asti began using the original spelling after she transitioned. Her mother, Helen (Jund) Astey, was a homemaker.

Along with her daughter Coca, Ms. Asti is survived by another daughter, Eamonn Gunther; a son, Trevor Astey; and five grandchildren. Another son, Pepe, died in childhood.

Ms. Asti showed an interest in electrical devices from an early age. By the time she was a teenager, she had a steady business fixing radios around her Greenwich Village neighborhood.

She attended Brooklyn Technical High School but dropped out at 17 to join the Navy. Her training in electrical engineering took her to Wake Island, a military outpost in the Pacific Ocean, where she installed radios in naval aircraft, a priority as war with Japan loomed.

Ms. Asti served throughout World War II and was discharged as a lieutenant commander after the war ended. She returned to New York, where she and three of her Navy pals opened a supper club in White Plains, north of New York City.

But she soon grew tired of the restaurant business. She sold her stake and took a job with E.W. Axe, a mutual fund company operating out of the Carrollcliffe mansion, a Romanesque castle overlooking the Hudson River in Tarrytown, N.Y. She married Evangelina Diaz-Perez in 1958.

Ms. Asti began to transition in the mid-1970s, at a time when transgender people were poorly understood, even in New York City. She would dress as a man at work, then come home and change into women’s clothing. Eventually the pressure of leading multiple lives got to be too much; she quit her job, came out as a woman and amicably divorced Ms. Diaz-Perez.

To more fully inhabit her new gender expression, she took a series of jobs viewed as typically female: For several years she worked as a makeup artist at Bloomingdale’s, a housekeeper and an off-the-books hairdresser. She also began trading stocks, eventually earning enough money to make that her full-time source of income.

In 1980 she met Norwood Patton, an artist, at a bar on the Upper East Side. They married in 2004 in an airplane hangar at the Orange County Airport in upstate New York. He died in 2012.

By her own account, Ms. Asti was no activist. She lived largely outside the movement for L.G.B.T.Q. rights of the 1980s and ’90s, despite its significant presence in New York City. But she took a stand when it was necessary.

Soon after her transition, her doctor told her that as part of her application to renew her pilot’s license, he had to give her an internal physical exam, as required by the Federal Aviation Administration. She found the requirement invasive and demeaning. With the help of the Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots, she petitioned the government to change its rule — which it promptly did.

After her husband died, Ms. Asti grew especially close to one of her grandsons, Erik Hummel, who lived with her for six years after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She became something of a den mother to his friends, fixing them Sunday dinner and regaling them with stories about growing up during the Great Depression or fighting in World War II.

In 2019 she and her grandson founded the Cloud Dancers Foundation, which provides assistance and awareness for older transgender people.

“She would say that she had been through a depression, through a world war, and that she had learned to just keep living,” Erik Hummel said. “She wanted to remind other transgender people who feel alone that there are people who care about them.”

Cloud Dancer is a nickname for an acrobatically inclined pilot, and Ms. Asti seemed to see a strong connection between flying and living as a transgender person.

“One of the unique things about flying,” she said in 2018, “is that you’ve got to be able to move from one position to another, because you can’t accept where you are.”

Source

[sadoldjonny]

#social security (us)

[wazafam]

By BY CLAY RISEN from U.S. in the New York Times-https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/us/robina-asti-dead.html?partner=IFTTT As a transgender veteran in her 90s, she challenged government bureaucracy. She then set a record as the oldest working flight instructor. Robina Asti, Who Made History on the Ground and in the Air, Dies at 99 New York Times

#BY CLAY RISEN #U.S. #Deaths (Obituaries) #Transgender and Transsexuals #Airlines and Airplanes #Soci

[crossdreamers]

A 99-year-old Transgender World War II Veteran is Raising $1 Million to Help LGBTQ Seniors and Homeless Youth

A week ago I reblogged an old post about Robina Asti, who fought in World War II, married, had children, and was the vice president of a major mutual fund. Then, in 1976, she transitioned to her true gender.

Today Pink News report that the 99 year old woman is raising money to “grant the wishes” of her fellow queer seniors, as well as homeless LGBTQ youth. 

The charity fundraiser page puts it this way:

“This GoFundMe page is the inaugural fundraiser for The Cloud Dancers Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) with a mission to grant extraordinary wishes to those who feel invisible, from the aging and LGBTQ to homeless youth. The Foundation’s motto is #WeSeeYou to help bring attention to these often-overlooked communities.”

She is currently living with her daughter, Coca, in California.

Asti is a pilot and flight instructor plans to start flying again as soon as lockdown is lifted. “I’m so lucky, I am still qualified to teach flying,” she says.

By the way: In 2014 Asti launched a challenge to win her husband Norwood Patton’s survivor benefits which she argued were rightfully hers after his death in 2012. She won.

Take a look at this amazing video from Inside Edition:

Photo: Michael Sharkey

#weseeyou #transgender #transition #LGBT Rights #lgbtqa

[javierpenadea]

"Robina Asti, Who Made History on the Ground and in the Air, Dies at 99" by BY CLAY RISEN via NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3cO1tF6

#NYT #news

[blairemclaren]

Robina Asti Death - Obituary | Robina Asti Has Died

Robina Asti Death - Dead,  Obituary, Funeral, Cause Of Death, Passed Away: On March 20th, 2021, InsideEko Media learned about the death of Robina Asti through social media publications made on Twitter. Click to read and leave tributes.

Robina Asti Death – Dead,  Obituary, Funeral, Cause Of Death, Passed Away: On March 20th, 2021, InsideEko Media learned about the death of Robina Asti through social media publications made on Twitter. InsideEko is yet to confirm Robina Asti’s cause of death as no health issues, accident or other causes of death have been learned to be associated with the passing. This death has caused a lot of…

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