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Notes -
No, what I mean is that Freddie does exactly what he says he does: he holds the conventional, liberal to mildly progressive views on all the topics. And he shuts down debate in the comments because (1) he's fed-up of people starting up fights when trans whatever is not the topic of his post and (2) he holds the One Correct View and anything that clashes with it is wrong.
I don't think Freddie considers that his view on abortion might be wrong, or the other things he mentioned. So if his view is not-wrong, the opposite views must be not-right. And if they are not-right, then that must be a choice between Evil or Stupid as to why such people hold not-right views.
I don't think that the progressive view is that people can honestly hold dissenting views on abortion or trans rights or the rest of it, that it is all down to prejudice, bigotry, racism, homo- and transphobia and so forth. So I don't think Freddie is open to "I disagree with trans rights activism because I don't accept the foundational principles, let's discuss this" because he's put forward his position: trans identity is about yearning, not genetics, don't bother asking about biology or the rest of it, end of discussion.
This is not to say I think Freddie is Evil or Stupid or anything else, just that he's holding this view very tightly on the grounds that this is the view to be held as per being a good progressive, yet in other instances he can see where the progressive rhetoric fails and is not compliant with reality.
I have read, with my own lying eyes, a Substack article by someone who earnestly and sincerely wished to get their fellow liberals/progressives to communicate with anti-abortion people. First, to do this, they have to understand something: anti-abortion rights people really do think it's a baby. Crazy, I know, but there you go. So what we have to do first is explain to them that it's a foetus, not a baby, and then all the objections will be overcome!
That was a good faith effort, and it was so wide of the mark in its understanding that I was banging my head off the desk. Yes, all we have to do is explain to the abolitionists that the negroes are not fully human to the same extent we are, and all the pother and fuss will be over!
If some people feel "I really want to wear dresses and makeup and be uWu" then I'd be happy to expand the range of gender roles so they can be men in dresses and so the hell what, rather than turn it all upside-down to be "oh you must really be a woman!", particularly as a lot of women don't care about dresses or makeup or being uWu, and it's really fucking annoying to have your sex/gender identity boiled down to "sugar and spice and everything nice" after years of feminism struggling about "women are not goddamn teddy bears".
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