I think that is a little bit unfair as there's definitely a middle ground of "would like to adjust but has honest and serious difficulty understanding what they need to change, or finds it far more difficult to make the change than a neurotypical person, and may or may not get defensive about being asked to change because of a history of being told it's simple and easy when it's not". (see: me and not being either an hour early or 1-5 minutes late to everything.)
Like, "wait ten minutes before launching into business" is a pretty reasonable thing that most people can understand, and anyone who is willing to try can probably do pretty immediately. "You look cranky and impatient during the first ten minutes, you need to participate in the socializing, and don't be grumpy or awkward about it! Or nonverbally imply that you'd rather get down to business!" can be a much bigger ask, and some people have had the first one suddenly turn into the second one, while everybody is pretending it's still the first one, enough times that they immediately respond badly to the first one too.
LW has an honestly pretty socially complex ask; "completely change your interaction style including following a new set of rules about conversational turn-taking" is a lot even for most neurotypical people. It's reasonable, valid, and probably necessary! But not simple or easy actually.
(It was also notable to me that LW focuses on sexism in Paul's interactions but doesn't actually mention how they interact with amab and/or male-passing people; usually in these kinds of letters LW is careful to point out that there's an obvious difference but this one didn't and given my experience of volunteer social justice groups, I wonder if LW's actually seen Paul interact with any cis white men that don't outrank them. It can be wildly frustrating, and very difficult to correct, to be repeatedly told you're treating a certain group differently when in fact you're treating everybody the same, it's just that certain groups of people read "rude as fuck" differently, but it's hard to figure that out when you're still struggling with "but what you're describing isn't what I'm doing so I don't know what you want changed!" This seems to come up pretty often with nd trans/gnc people too, who may not have a good handle on social gender dynamics even before they start to constantly shift position in them.)
Like, for the record, Paul just sounds like an asshole, and the problems LW and boss are putting front and center are almost a red herring compared to the long rants full of expletives and insults, going behind people's backs, and choosing to speak for the group on topics they aren't qualified or asked to speak on. Those are all very concrete things that they need to be told they should stop immediately and if they can't they need to leave the group, and if it's really disability related, work with some kind of therapist on it before returning to leadership roles. But if they can't even manage that, "work on your conversational turn-taking with afab people" probably *is* well beyond their level to comprehend.
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Like, "wait ten minutes before launching into business" is a pretty reasonable thing that most people can understand, and anyone who is willing to try can probably do pretty immediately. "You look cranky and impatient during the first ten minutes, you need to participate in the socializing, and don't be grumpy or awkward about it! Or nonverbally imply that you'd rather get down to business!" can be a much bigger ask, and some people have had the first one suddenly turn into the second one, while everybody is pretending it's still the first one, enough times that they immediately respond badly to the first one too.
LW has an honestly pretty socially complex ask; "completely change your interaction style including following a new set of rules about conversational turn-taking" is a lot even for most neurotypical people. It's reasonable, valid, and probably necessary! But not simple or easy actually.
(It was also notable to me that LW focuses on sexism in Paul's interactions but doesn't actually mention how they interact with amab and/or male-passing people; usually in these kinds of letters LW is careful to point out that there's an obvious difference but this one didn't and given my experience of volunteer social justice groups, I wonder if LW's actually seen Paul interact with any cis white men that don't outrank them. It can be wildly frustrating, and very difficult to correct, to be repeatedly told you're treating a certain group differently when in fact you're treating everybody the same, it's just that certain groups of people read "rude as fuck" differently, but it's hard to figure that out when you're still struggling with "but what you're describing isn't what I'm doing so I don't know what you want changed!" This seems to come up pretty often with nd trans/gnc people too, who may not have a good handle on social gender dynamics even before they start to constantly shift position in them.)
Like, for the record, Paul just sounds like an asshole, and the problems LW and boss are putting front and center are almost a red herring compared to the long rants full of expletives and insults, going behind people's backs, and choosing to speak for the group on topics they aren't qualified or asked to speak on. Those are all very concrete things that they need to be told they should stop immediately and if they can't they need to leave the group, and if it's really disability related, work with some kind of therapist on it before returning to leadership roles. But if they can't even manage that, "work on your conversational turn-taking with afab people" probably *is* well beyond their level to comprehend.