Six Months After OBX

Half a year ago, a serious transphobic incident happened at OBX Fall Flippers, a major IFPA tournament in Grandy, NC. I previously wrote about the transphobic bathroom-policing incident here. Nothing has been resolved since then, and it has risen to the status of a national NBC news article. The IFPA is clearly tired of hearing about it, and they want us to stop protesting, without them having to fix anything. What confuses some people, especially outsiders to the competitive pinball scene, is that they generalize from other news stories and -- before reading the story -- they assume that there was a problem with trans women competing in women's tournaments. And, of course, that is not true at all. Women's pinball is, on the whole, very welcoming of trans women and non-binary players. It's not women's pinball that's the problem, really. It's open pinball, the kind that's mostly men, the kind we want more women to feel welcome in. The OBX incident happened during an open pinball…