To clarify or obscure?
Generally speaking, if you have a cause that matters to you, if you have something to say, you want to speak as clearly as possible and to be understood. Why isn't trans activism like that?
Every civil-rights movement I can think of has needed clear language and free speech because every civil-rights movement has needed to make injustice visible and to be understood.
So, it's always curious that the trans movement doesn't share these needs. The opposite, in fact.
When it comes to gender identity, no one must speak freely. Everyone must speak in a language that constricts thought and expression alike. The truth of situations must be obscured, not clarified, wrapped in shadows, not brought into the light.
There's no desire to make the public understand, only to make people comply. In fact, the less the public knows and understands the better.
Generally speaking, if you have a cause that matters to you, if you have something to say, you want to speak as clearly as possible and to be understood. The last thing you want is to wring meaning from language. You can’t afford to confuse people.
I learned this lesson in my personal life first: People who want to be understood try to speak clearly, even if they struggle to find the right words. But sometimes, people—and causes—benefit from being misunderstood: We just need to pee. Nobody is medically transitioning kids. Rights aren’t pie.
Civil-rights movements don't behave like this. Calling trans activism a 'civil-rights movement' is branding, nothing more.
You are right it is branding and nothing more. A civil rights movement doesn't demand ideological compliance, the repetition of mantras, and the villification and cancelling of people who respectfully disagree. Once though the veil is torn away what do they have? Politicians who can't make their case as to what a woman is, a police force that priorities the 'rights' of men to strip search women and label any protest a non-crime hate crime, health services instructing staff to lie rather than admit there are men on a female ward, and sporting bodies pretending that post-puberty men don't have a competitive advantage compared to women and councils with rainbow crossings that frighten the horses. As the veil is torn away what is left is lies and ridicule. But then I think of the children vulnerable to this ideology and the vulnerable adults subjected to the cruel punishment of men in women's prisons and it is hard not to feel so very angry at the failure of our intellectual and political class who think of themselves as decent, moral beings and yet call people who object hateful bigots rather than calling out the threats of violence and intimidation. It is hard not to feel fear at the damage this powerful ideological movement is infliting and might further inflict.
My child's first angry words about his newfound trans identity were "Educate yourself." I found this dumbfounding.