TREF is the word. The controversy of the Pride in London Parade last month in which a crowd of anti-trans demonstrators were given the go-ahead to highjack the march has made us very aware of the acronym. Now in the US a churched formed on the grounds of Trans Exclusionary Feminism (TERF) beliefs has been recognised by the IRS, making it tax exempt.
The Pussy Church of Modern Witchcraft may not sound like something that would be approved under the Trump administration considering it’s regressive views on gender and sexuality, but somehow they made it. The IRS have recognised it as a 501(c)(3) organisation which means that it’s expect from paying taxes, but perhaps more worryingly, it is exempt from transparency.
This seems to legitimise the anti-trans beliefs of this organisation, turing it into gospel. The following ideals of the Church are posted clearly on its website:
“A woman is an adult female human. A girl is a minor female human. The Pussy Church serves Women and Girls only. Males are not permitted to participate, regardless of how they identify. We expressly reject the concepts of gender identity, transgenderism, and gender as being meaningful to defining what a Woman or Girl is.”
They have formed to come together against global oppression based on ‘biological sex’, seeing gender as ‘a mechanism of women’s oppression globally’.
According to an inquiry made by Forbes, the approval of the organisation as a church was reasonably quick and there was ‘no pushback from the IRS’.
Since it has set itself up as a Church, supporting the views expressed by them comes under the US constitutional right for religious freedom which would enable these views to gain a platform. Much like the debate brewing around the denial of wedding services to same-sex couples by some vendors, pointing to religious freedom as a justification, now being a Church there is now potential for denying trans women certain services with siting it as a religious freedom.
