> Please, enlighten me. Name me a state which conforms to your ideals of 'free speech absolutism'

My point wasn't that there was, it was that the things you were pointing out were easily avoided by not going to the jurisdictions in which they were prevalent. Ironically, the answer to your question not that long ago would have been what is considered western countries.

> No, I believe that your display of visceral hostility towards the speech of 'professional offence takers' and insinuation that being asked to use particular pronouns is a burden to which all other requests/demands to comply with cultural norms pale in comparison is an indication of a type of speech you value over others

Well, you're wrong once again. I don't care if objections to free speech are rooted in leftist marxist arguments for subversion, snowflake tier nonsense about feelings protection, or brutalist fascist arguments for protecting the prestige of the state, they're all equally as bad as each other and I do not value any particular objection any higher than the other. The simple fact is though the ones that actually are eroding free speech in the western world today are very firmly on the emotional and leftist side of the political spectrum, which is why those are the ones I'm attacking directly in this discussion. All other forms of infringement on free speech pale in comparison to those.

> in this case the speech of the person offending the minority group over the speech of the offended party.

Once again, complete nonsense, if you're preferencing a right to free speech of special interest group A over group B, then you're by definition not a free speech absolutist. My view is that stupid people ought to be able to say stupid things without being silenced by other stupid people, and you analyse the trainwreck at the end to figure out where the actual truth lies, and without that process you never get to figure out the truth to begin with.

> People actually defending freedom of expression don't tend to argue that the most uniquely horrible threat to freedom of speech worldwide comes from those using their own speech to argue that a particular person is a bigot their company or university shouldn't host.

This is completely false, this is typically the exact kind of people that other free speech absolutists including myself are ringing alarm bells about precisely because they are the ones most effectively eroding free speech in the modern world, and having people like you come to their defense despite the magnitude of harm their idiocy entails.

> Partly because they care about securing people's right to advocate boycotts even if they don't agree with boycotts

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at all, but for what it's worth I'm completely comfortable with the idea that people ought to be able to boycott whoever they please for whatever reason they please and that has nothing to do with freedom of speech, unless of course you're mandating the global boycott of party x in order to impose a chilling effect on their freedom of speech as party y, which is abhorrent, yes.

> and partly because much of the rest of the world is entirely comfortable with jailing people for wrongthink.

Which is why it's such a great tragedy that the last vestiges of the place where this was not the case has now vigorously reversed course on that state now means by magnitude, the modern west is one of the least free places in terms of speech. That is utterly horrific.