Unfortunately Frequently Asked Questions About Transphobic Pinball Events
Yes, that's my chest in the header image. No, the cut of my T-shirt isn't flattering.
When I wrote the post Six Months After OBX, I put together this separate post of spicy answers to the kinds of questions people have been asking, but decided to only post it if things got worse.
Things got worse. I will not go into detail on that yet, so I can let victims speak first.
The IFPA has improved their rules since OBX, is that enough?
OBX already showed that rules alone are not enough, especially when the leadership is as flawed as the IFPA's. The IFPA operates on precedent a lot, and the current precedent is that a rule is not enforceable if Josh Sharpe would be uncomfortable with it being enforced.
That hasn't changed in any way, and the new rules are just clarifications of what the old, unenforced rules said. We're looking for real changes and accountability, not lip service.
I'm a tournament director or IFPA staff and I can't believe I'm being called transphobic. I play pinball with trans people and I welcome them. You know I'm not transphobic. Why is this happening?
Do you welcome all trans people, not just "the good ones" who pass as their gender and don't make a fuss?
Do you support those who are protesting the IFPA for condoning a hate crime?
Are you willing to put the blame for OBX on the cis men who enabled it to happen, not on the trans people it happened to? Will you demand that Josh Sharpe, Adam Becker, and Kevin Stone be held accountable, even belatedly?
If you can honestly answer yes to those, then you are an ally and you should not be accused of transphobia. The people I have heard accused of transphobia have earned it, because they have done none of these and fought against some of them.
And if your position is "I don't see why it's a big deal that a trans woman was thrown out of a bathroom and threatened with arrest, I just want to play pinball," that is transphobia.
The IFPA has a trans woman on its staff, does that help?
That's called tokenism, and it extremely doesn't help.
Are you really saying Josh, Adam, and Kevin are responsible for what happened at OBX? It was a bad situation and they got the wrong advice from a trans woman and--
You know the IFPA already had rules on safety and inclusion before OBX, right? The responsibility of a TD or an IFPA director is to uphold the rules, even if they are cis.
Seeking advice is fine, but they didn't do very much of that, and they are still responsible for their decisions. They should not have sought a blessing to do nothing about it from the nearest trans woman. A four-word response from an overwhelmed trans woman is not permission to run a tournament that violates IFPA's inclusion policy.
If you consider their words to mean things instead of being meaningless fake apologies: Josh, Adam, and Kevin have all said themselves they are responsible for what happened at OBX. So why would it be shocking for me to agree?
Don't you think some of the responses by trans players have gone too far?
No trans player has thrown a cis person out of a bathroom and threatened to call the cops on all the cis people, so, no, we have not gone too far.
You're worried about the effect that angry trans people could have on your reputation, or your job, or your family being disappointed in you? First of all, we're not really that powerful. Secondly, trans people in the US have to worry about those things all the time plus worries about being arrested, forcibly detransitioned, or killed.
If you're cis, you're doing this on easy mode. IFPA staff, you can own your mistakes and talk to the victims, and if you can't, you should step down and yield to someone who can.
But we don't enjoy talking to the victims. They're all messy people with a chip on their shoulder.
Wow, I wonder how that happened!
Okay, I'm on your side, how do I help?
Support pinball tournaments that have nothing to do with the IFPA. If the IFPA has no alternative, there will be no way to hold them accountable, and they will continue to be able to push trans people out of pinball entirely.
I have been glad to see the increase in non-IFPA tournaments of various forms, whether they're simply one-shot tournaments, local leagues that have left the IFPA, or alternative structures like Punk Rock Pinball.
We don't want to segregate pinball. We used to participate in the tournaments that IFPA players were playing in while opting out of the IFPA, and unfortunately, the IFPA took away all of our options to do that. So now the best way to stop segregating pinball is for cis people to play in non-IFPA tournaments.