Those who exercise free speech should also defend it even when it’s offensive

Clearly not, since exactly as I already said, the examples you cite are restricted to specific jurisdictions it's quite easy to avoid, although the one you go to with the example of "excruciatingly forced politeness" has me scratching my head about the problem, frankly.

> Perhaps you believe these cultural norms are more intrinsically worth defending than politeness towards transpeople

I don't really care about any of those cultural norms frankly, and the position of free speech absolutists has nothing whatsoever to do with "politeness towards transpeople". Being able to describe reality without censoring the truth is an essential function of analysis and thus improvement of that reality. Prohibiting or policing it inevitably results in the degradation of that reality because the problems you're not allowed to discuss can't be addressed, either. This is the fundamental reason for free speech absolutism, not concerns about "lol it's fun to trigger the transpeople / leftists / marxists / religious conservatives" or whatever other juvenile nonsense passes muster for the straw man you're trying to present it as.

> but it's safe to say that culture warriors who've been no-platformed by the side of the 'trans debate' they want to silence are raking in donations rather than languishing in jails.

And what exactly does that position have to do with saying it's not a big deal that free speech is being continuously eroded in the jurisdictions where it's traditionally been taken for granted and the idea of that erosion was seen as absurd not two decades ago? You cite another group of people who'd like to erode it in the other direction and you think you've actually made an argument as to why it should be eroded? Because almost everybody has gone mad, or has always in fact been mad and it has simply become more obvious as time progresses and social media displays their madness for all to directly observe?

> people who espouse illiberal views on minorities in the West are unique in the magnitude of their victimhood because they might attract so much attention their book becomes a bestseller or they become elected President of the United States.

I honestly can't even parse this sentence into something that has a relationship to material reality, do you think people defending free speech have a problem with minorities and that's baked into the position or something and you're just jumping to that conclusion immediately without actually examining it at all?

> One of the consequences of greater levels of free speech is greater exposure to criticism, justified and otherwise.

And that'd be just grand, because those trying to restrict that speech are in desperate need of greater criticism, and it is entirely justified.

Otherwise, if I am ever rejected by a company in an interview it would be a clear violation of my free speech rights.

It wasn't violent. And I shouldnt be afraid to disclose my opinion that bubble sort is indeed the fastest sort algorithm under all conditions and scenarios.

If you go trans because you suffer from gender dysphoria, your 'fix' is to become accepted as the gender you identify as. To achieve it, you do HRT and a surgery (if you suffer from bottom dysphoria), and you present yourself as the gender you identify as, NOT as trans. This goes so far that these people correct you if you call them trans - they are a "Man" or a "Woman" now. If these people pass, they also pass as cis and are thus not easily recognizable as having undergone transition.

I'm active in a fan community of an Anime that features dissociation, so it accidentally attracts people with gender dysphoria. I had affairs with some people from this community and, this way, also got into the gay/trans community, which has an significant overlap. This is how i learned that identity politics is not representative of queer people. Heck, even the CSD/gay pride with the rainbow flags isn't representative of the gay community - many sexually deviant people just want to live a normal life and not be associated with pants where your butt cheeks peek out. I'm one of them.

It matters if you choose your audience. I agree, if you make a statement in public, say on twitter, then you've chosen the audience. The world.

You’d have to recognise that the word wasn’t benign in that context first?