Announcement: Notice of Resignation
Over the past week, the remaining members of the IFPA Women’s Advisory Board have recognized that our working relationship with IFPA Leadership cannot be repaired. On November 19, we notified Josh Sharpe of our collective resignation.Our intention is to finish the Women’s North American Championship Series/Women’s World Championship cycle for 2026 before fully stepping down, though our duties until then will be limited to those events.We want to be clear that while we are incredibly disappointed with how the OBX decision was handled, we do not view the IFPA as a bigoted organization. What we do see is an organization that urgently needs to update its leadership structure and make space for a more diverse set of voices that can truly reflect the community it serves. A global player base deserves leadership that includes people from marginalized groups in meaningful and empowered roles.
We remain proud of what the Women’s Advisory Board has accomplished in the six years since our founding, and we hope that the IFPA continues to build on that progress. In our resignation letter, we outlined concrete recommendations to support that transition, and we leave it in the hands of IFPA Leadership to provide future staff with clarity, structure, and a true seat at the table.
There is still important work to be done in this space, but seeing so much recent support for trans and nonbinary players gives us hope for the future of competitive pinball. As ever, pinball is for everyone.
With gratitude,
Crystal, Karyn, Kim, and Zoe
This is a huge loss. Appreciate you all so much.
Thank you for everything y’all have done. Agreed that this is a huge loss. Hopefully this means more diverse voices on the main board.
And now transgender players are openly threatening cis players who support the general direction of the ifpa. Thanks yall.
Why are you spreading lies? Hey, IFPA, why are you letting transphobes post hate on your forums?
Wow look someone throwing around words like “bigot” to harass a pinball player. Ifpa, are you going to let this public harassment stand on your site?
Look at how certain members of this community call a person a bigot based on literally nothing at all.
I find it interesting that comments are closed on the other posts about the OBX tournament, but remain open on this post for people hiding behind psuedonyms to make baseless claims against women. IFPA, please do better.
Baseless claims like the person accusing others of being a bigot.
Quick! Make a bunch of sponsored posts to bury this one and hope it all goes away🤞😅 Sure hope another sanctioning committee and ranking system doesn’t come out and all that’s left at IFPA is bigots😬
Who could have guessed that being rude and snarky to the players trying to promote your hobby and businesses could come back to haunt you!?!?!
Because labeling everyone a bigot is doing wonders for progressive movements. Do better.
The pinball patriarchy is played out. I wasn’t talking about you but maybe you recognized something in there🪞 I’m doing just fine, stay in your lane and have a great night!
Hey Bobbi, maybe competitive pinball isn’t the hobby for you. You can have just for fun events all day long until your hearts content. Calling and organization a bigoted organization is exactly the kind of d of unhinged rhetoric that has fatigued most reasonable people.
Hey Labubu, pinball is for everyone. This is the kind of attitude and gatekeeping that caused a need like the WAB to begin with. It’s obvious women’s & non-binary pinball is moving forward and into a more welcoming future without IFPA. Hope you have a fun weekend and get to enjoy some games!
I’ll say I am super disappointed to see all the doxxing attempts being made by the supposedly compassionate side of this.
A decision to not retroactively punish players who had nothing to do with the incident was made, now anyone who is not outraged by that decision has been marked and labeled as a bigot to be doxxed.
Literal shame on the transgender community for this unwarranted vitriol.
So a non pinball person on North Carolina acted bigoted about a gas station bathroom policy and the advisory boards suggestion was to sanction all the innocent players who didn’t even know something happened.
Honestly that makes this board incompetent anyway.
Amazing to see people in this thread make broad brush statements like the ifpa is nothing but a bigot organization and see those same people not understand why that makes their opinion on this matter questionable in the first place. It’s always disappointing to see people actively working to to cause divisions in a community where there is none. It seems some live for the fight and when they smell blood they pounce.
A bigoted venue employee acted in a horrible unacceptable unforgivable way and that venue has justifiably been banned. Taking that turn of events and using it to paint the ifpa with a broad brush as a bigoted organization is the exact kind of rhetoric that turns impressionable
People against social movement. Demanding all players be punished after the fact wouldn’t even be enough. People in these very comments telling other players that they are bigots for expressing the agree with not Desanctioning is absurd. Doxxing people for agreeing with the decision is absurd. Players threatening to doxx or attempt to impact their standing with the ifpa for standing with the decision is absurd. If you genuinely believe that behavior is righteous I’m afraid you are lost.
I support the decision of the ifpa to ban the venue and not hold innocent players accountable for a venue employees behavior. If an advisory board can’t be trusted to make rational fair decisions that board is useless.
It would be nice to see the ifpa come out and state that any further harassment of its members by those upset with the box decision will not be tolerated whatsoever. The side which claims to be inclusive sure is looking like a rabid bunch of irrational dogs.
I am not an American based player so don’t deal with the same level of bigotry Americans seem to but I am confused on this issue. If the issue was that a venue employee discriminated against people and that venue is now banned from future events what other actions does this board want to happen? It certainly appears the board wanted to punish every single player based on the actions of the venue employee, and that is what I’m not understanding. Why did this board wanted to punish each individual player?
Should a board that suggested an irrational, unfair, and frankly a purely emotional response to an issue that has been handled by banning the venue be allowed to stay on board through the end of the events they mentioned? They do not have the best interests of the ifpa or the vast majority of its players at heart and I for one do not think they should have ANY continued influence on the competitive side of pinball.
What an absolute shitshow. On one side you have a group of extremely loud, determined people who want as many as people as possible punished for this disturbing event, and on the other side you have some loud and determined folks who simply do not understand what the purpose of taking points away from all the players is. I think the ifpa did a bad job of communicating on the day of this event, and this advisory board is doing a really bad job of communicating why they insist on punishing all the players who received points. I really don’t have an opinion and can see both sides but no one from the president to this advisory board seems to have the slightest bit of communication skill. Ifpa leaders – be more engaged during events – ifpa women advisory board – do better explaining the reasoning behind sanctioning the players who participated.
I thought I read somewhere that the venue was banned from hosting future events. Seems like an absolutely fair and harsh punishment. Giving a venue the “death penalty” seems pretty decisive. Why are people saying the ifpa is bigots for that?
I support the players who traveled, qualified and played great pinball all weekend at obx. Taking those points away over the behavior of a venue employee is draconian. Who would suggest that?
I just read the slack messages related to this controversy and while I feel the event should have been immediately cancelled, the unprofessionallism and outright rudeness displayed by some of the women on this advisory board is incredibly off putting. I do not trust them to make calm measured rational decisions.
Spent alot of time going back and forth on this one and just based on the immature and unprofessional behavior of the advisory board on messages to the president of the org who was being extremely respectful throughout really makes me think these specific women were not the right ones for this important task. Need people of a more serious and mature nature.