No strawman required. There are real devs with extreme TDD zealotry. It's very possible that the author has worked with such devs, and I see no reason to doubt his experience. Your use of the word "strawman" above, doesn't magically make such devs which push TDD with zealotry as some silver bullet solution not exist.
The only reasonable reading of your point then is that those devs are not enough to justify the phrase "frail little minds". It would take some far more extreme, non-existent in the world, level of TDD zealotry (what you call a "strawman TDD position") to justify sthe use of a phrase.
But that's just you setting an arbitrary criterium. Which neither the author, nor I share. I'm fine with using the term "frail little minds" for people with real-world levels of TDD zealotry. I furthermore understand that it's just a phrase used by the author to refer to devs that can't get over their (real world level) TDD zealotry, that it doesn't imply anything about them otherwise, and that it's not a big fucking deal.
>See how that’s not dehumanizing?
No, I fail to see how the authors turn of phrase was dehumanizing. I leave such characterization to actually dehumanizing things, for example racism.