I was reading a tweet from someone the other day reacting to Dave Chappelle’s latest show, and she claimed he was “erasing the identities of trans people”. This is a fairly common complaint, and it’s always struck me as odd because I’ve thought there is no way someone else’s belief about me can erase anything about me. But it struck me that it’s a tacit admission that such an identity is purely pretend.  

I have been doing my best to understand what exactly is meant by erasure in the context of trans. Erasure can be a real thing. Marginalized groups’ histories can be forcibly erased by something like a colonizing government not allowing indigenous people’s culture. But in the trans-identity context, that  doesn’t seem to be applicable. In the trans context, the issue seems to be that while someone who feels like they are the opposite sex can internally identify as that, the reality of them being accepted as the opposite sex hinges on others going along with it.  
But it is obvious as well that if 1) a trans person’s belief not only requires them to pretend to be something, and 2) it also requires others to pretend as well, then the entire endeavor is built on a lie.
I accept that there are people who suffer from gender dysphoria, and it feels real. They genuinely feel like they should be the opposite sex. But the answer to that can’t be to claim you are the opposite sex, and then need everyone else to accept your word for it.

However, if an identity can be erased by other people’s acceptance, then their acceptance is what creates it in the first place.  
Anyone can perform as the opposite gender, and they would of course know they are just performing;* pretending to be that gender.

Cue the old story of the Emperor’s new clothes; The emperor was fooled into believing he wasn’t actually naked, ONLY because everyone else was pretending along with him.  All it took was for some dumb kid who didn’t get the memo, for the entire pretension, the big lie, to unravel. The kid’s unbelief ‘erased’ the identity of the king as a well-dressed person, and exposed him as naked.

Nothing about my identity can be erased by someone else not believing in it. But then, that’s because my identity isn’t based on pretending to be something I’m not. So it doesn’t really matter to me if someone doesn’t believe x or y about me.  
The only way others can erase your identity, is if your identity is based on, and therefore created by, others believing it.  
Of course trans people know this. That’s what the complaint about erasing their identities is all about. The fact that they insist on carrying out such a farce, gaslighting on a global, or at least national scale, is perhaps the most galling thing about this movement. It’s the insistence we all bow to lies so they can live out their delusions.

As a follow up, I have to say I have now listened to many trans people’s stories, and I genuinely feel for them. There are people that experience genuine gender dysphoria, and it sounds horrible. Some people choose to deal with that dysphoria by trying to physically transition their bodies. Some try to deal with by dressing up and trying to present themselves as much as possible as the opposite sex. Others just try to deal with the issue as much as possible without physically changing themselves. But at heart it’s a psychological condition that people suffer from. They need help and love and encouragement just as much as anyone else in this life. So I’m not trying to needlessly pick on those who are already feeling left out and confused. But what these activists are trying to do probably qualifies as genuine evil, even if they think they’re coming from a place of compassion. No one is helped living by lies, and what they are doing is insisting we all do exactly that.

* One of the foundations of this is that ALL identity is performative. They point to the fact that a typical male will dress a certain way, and say that is performative. Of course there are outward appearances of masculinity that typical males will adhere to. But stripping that away doesn’t strip out their male-ness either.  

I also have to give credit for the clever choice of the word ‘performance’ as a description of action. Performance can mean both 1) the carrying out of actions- as in a work ‘performance review’, as well as 2) the staging or presentation of a play, or some form of entertainment.  

On these grounds, they can use the word performance to describe their pretending to be the opposite gender, and it naturally conflates with the other definition- carrying out tasks.  

But despite the use of the same word, those are two different things.