@DadJoke
My apologies for the late reply - real life intrudes but your points are worth answering.
If you are cisgender you are not transgender. If you accept that transgender people exist, then whatever you think of them, a word for people who aren't when you are discussing transgender people makes sense. Even if you think religion is bunk, atheist is still a useful word
Atheist is indeed a useful word in the context of religion. It means a person who stands outside the belief system entirely.
Cisgender however does not mean "someone who stands outside the gender belief system entirely", it means "someone whose gender aligns with their body sex" (or, let's be honest, it usually means "someone whose gender the observing genderist assumes aligns with their body sex").
In accepting "cis" therefore, one is implicitly accepting the reality of a gender that can align or not to body sex. It is a word that works within the belief system not standing outside it.
And that is just cis/trans "person". Taken in the usual form of cis/trans "women" it takes a step even deeper inside the gender belief system in that to use that pairing, even if one is ostensibily just accepting that trans people exist without accepting the genderist belief system, one is implicity accepting that the comparator for a trans woman is a "cis" woman rather than any other type of person.
If a person honestly wants to differentiate between trans people and those who do not identify as trans, "people who do not identify as trans" seems a reasonable phrase. It's a bit clunky, sure, but it follows the established convention in genderist language to avoid assuming gender (eg "people with a uterus", "people who menstruate" and so on).
They [gender critical people] have pretty much captured the MSM
You must read/view a very limited selection if that is what you are seeing.
Trans ideologists have literally written ISPO guidelines that require MSM publications to prioritise self-identified gender over natal sex even in the reporting of crimes that are overwhlemingly male-pattern not female-pattern*.
To claim therefore that MSM are "captured by gender critical people" seems.... disingenous.
Looking at the big names in the UK MSM:
The Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail report gender critical perspectives fairly, although since the last two are less motivated by the feminist aspect and more with general small-c conservatism, I would not describe them as especially "gender critical" .
The BBC, the FT, the Guardian, the Independant and the big social media groups all adhere to gender ideological concepts. When they do report gender-critical people and perspectives they frame it as as "bigotry", "transphobia" or "anti-trans". Aside from the Nolan podcasts I don't think I've seen a single clear explanation on the BBC or Guardian of why female people may feel that defining male people as women is detrimental to female voices, rights and autonomy.
Since clearly you feel the opposite, could you please provide some evidence that the MSM outlets in my second group are "captured" by gender critical people?
You aren't advocating for male cleaners to be removed from toilets, or male staff from prisons, even though your ostensbile reason for fearing transgender women is "because they are men"
Is that what you think my position is? Interesting. And wrong.
Speaking for myself:
I'm comfortable with male people in female spaces from time to time to do specific work under clear boundaries, as long as there is provision for female people who, for cultural or trauma reasons, cannot have males in intimate spaces, to ask those male people to leave (or in the case of prisons, to have female-only alternatives) and for that request to be understood and accepted.
I don't specifically fear individual transgender MTF people in female spaces any more than I fear any other male who chooses to belittle and ignore female boundaries. However I do fear/am more wary of all males, of any gender, who choose to belittle and ignore female boundaries than those who don't simply because these males have already proved they place their own perspective on, and what they want and need from, female people above what female believe may believe, want and need for themselves.
I also understand, from lived experience, the mental pressure that being female-bodied in a still male-dominiated society brings, how female-only spaces (physical and social) provide relief from that pressure, and how letting even one male person in changes that dynamic and reloads the mental weight. And I understand how our cultural history of sexism means male voices, priorities, experiences and biases have shaped public debate and therefore political priorities in ways that disempower women.
So because of that I do fear the social and political implications of a movement that will not accept that female people may have a right and a need to self-define as different to male, to speak openly and honestly about the challenges and reality of being female-bodied in our society, and to organise socially and poltically in our own interest to counteract those challenges. I believe that if the gender-ideologists are successful in their quest to define any and all ways of referring to physical or social differences between the sexes as "transphobic dog whistles", I am facing a future where I will face social bias, financial disempowerment and physical and sexual danger because I am female but no longer be able to publically speak about it to say it is still happening and demand society does better by us.
And it is that which brings this long post and initial derailment slap bang right back on topic.
.* Incidentally but worth saying: I consider these patterns to be fundamentally social not biological. I don;t think someting in a male's body makes it unavoidable that far more males than females commit sex crimes and violent crimes. On the contrary, I fully accept that in another place and time that male/female pattern may not exist, and I'd welcome any effort to move towards that. None of that changes the fact that here and now, in our society, this male pattern criminality does exist and to ignore that is to fail female people.