I'm Elia Lake (IFPA #92725). I have concerns to bring up about the trans-exclusionary pinball tournament that was held by Kevin Stone at OBX. I traveled to this tournament, but did not enter it, due to the events that happened.

This is a moment when it's very important for the IFPA to take a strong stand against discrimination. As an IFPA policy update said this year: "One of the IFPA's highest priorities is to ensure that players feel welcomed and supported regardless of race, religion, gender, orientation, or ability."

At the OBX open tournament, trans players were not welcome from the start of the tournament. Becky Connell, a non-pinball-player who was the manager on site at the venue, was running the registration desk for the tournament. She chased a trans woman out of the bathroom, which is discrimination and sexual harassment. She verbally abused people at the registration desk who looked queer to her, and threatened to call the police if any other trans women used the bathroom. The police can easily destroy the lives of trans people, so this threat alone made most trans players unwilling to enter the tournament space. I was among them - I stayed in the parking lot hoping for a resolution, along with about 15 other players.

The resolution never came and I never entered the tournament. I was not going to give financial support to a transphobically-managed business (Flippers) by paying for any of their tournaments or putting coins in their machines.

The trans woman that Becky Connell sexually harassed had a panic attack outside the building, and after more trans friends arrived to help her, she drove back to her AirBnB for the rest of the day. Becky Connell was not removed from the tournament, and she was allowed to keep running the registration desk for 3 hours until her shift as the manager ended, which made it unsafe for all trans people to enter the building for 3 hours.

The TD, Kevin Stone, failed to handle this. It was his duty to address the hate crime that happened at his tournament, remove the perpetrator from having any role in his tournament, and pause the tournament until it was resolved. Instead, the tournament proceeded with cis people playing as if nothing had happened. Some players, when told that trans players had been excluded, expressed approval or indifference. Kevin Stone never contacted the player who was harassed, or even attempted to find out who she was until someone specifically told him late in the evening.

Kevin relied on two trans women who would be running the next day's tournaments to offer a "compromise" to repair the tournament. As I understand it, they went above and beyond to try to find a compromise, then stormed out when Kevin Stone addressed a trans woman as "sir".

I was in a group of at least 10 players who boycotted the venue completely and made alternate plans for how to spend our vacation.

I know you've probably heard these concerns by now, and possibly delegated them to women, just like Kevin Stone tried to do. I greatly respect the work that the women's board does but I need to say: this is not just a "women's issue". This is a big problem of trans exclusion in open pinball and it should not fall entirely on women to solve it. It's not only important that trans women and adjacent people are welcome in women's pinball; it's important that all trans people are welcome in all of pinball, and the IFPA as a whole needs to step up.

I have already heard hedges such as "oh, but 17 hours of the tournament were fair enough" that suggest only small adjustments to the tournament. I have heard that we should let the tournament stand and quibble over its format. I have also heard that trans people should vote with their feet and go to a different tournament, which is the opposite of a resolution because it creates segregation in pinball.

There is a way to send a message that anti-trans hate is unacceptable, bathroom policing is unacceptable, letting it slide as a bystander is unacceptable, and segregation is not the answer: it is to remove all the points from the OBX Open tournament. No WPPR points for an anti-trans tournament.