Author's posts
Feb 01 2014
It’s never too late to discriminate
Robina Asti is 92 years old and has been recognized by the government as a woman for over 30 years. She transitioned in 1976. She is a commercial pilot and the FAA has recognized her as a woman ever since they awarded her a license. She has made a living teaching people how to fly airplanes. The government issued her a passport designating her to be a woman. Her Social Security account labels her a woman.
Robina is a WWII veteran, having served as a Navy pilot. She is currently locked in a battle with the Social Security Administration…which she is losing.
In 2004 Robina married Norwood Patton in Hanger A of Orange County Airport in New York. Norwood new she was a transsexual woman, but he didn’t care. Oh, he was upset at first, but he got over it in a week. He asked her to get married every month for a lot of years.
Norwood died in 2012 at the age of 97. So Robina asked the Social Security Administration for survivors benefits. After almost a year of review, she was denied.
The reason?
[H]er marriage does not meet the requirements under Federal law for payment of Social Security widow’s benefits.
At the time of your marriage, you were not legally a woman.
Jan 25 2014
Behaving Badly
Caleb Hannan writes for the ESPN-owned digital magazine Grantland. While watching an infomercial about a new putter last year he decided to do a story on the club’s inventor, Essay Anne Vanderbilt, also known as Dr. V.
In doing his research for the article, he encountered difficulty verifying some of the “facts” about Dr. V’s past. Vanderbilt was purportedly one of “the” Vanderbilt’s, an associate of the Hiltons, a physicist specializing in aeronautics who was educated at MIT and had worked on the stealth bomber, and a graduate of Wharton School of Business. Hannan could find no evidence to corroborate any of that. So he kept digging and eventually published a 7700 word article on the invention of the Yar putter and its inventor. He couldn’t even find a photo of Vanderbilt on the web. The infomercial apparently was done instead by CBS golf analyst Gary McCord and Steve Elkington.
But he refused to be deterred. McCord told the story of how an unknown woman approached an executive at TaylorMade who explained to him how everything involved in their design was wrong.
She just hammered them on their designs. Hammered them.
–McCord
Jan 18 2014
Maryland to give it another try
On Tuesday Maryland state Senator Rich Madaleno (D-Montgomery County) introduced another bill that would outlaw discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation against individuals on the basis of their gender identity.
A similar bill last year died in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee by a vote of 6-5 in March. Proponents of the bill feel optimistic this year, citing cultural progress and the endorsement of some key political figures.
I am very hopeful. Given the way our culture has changed in a progressive direction in Maryland and given the support we now have from the Senate and House leadership we will get the votes in the Judicial Proceedings Committee to move the bill.
–Dana Beyers, executive director of Gender Rights Maryland