if Paul was receptive to correction, i think the correction might be along the lines of “before you say something, think about if what you say is going to actually be useful. consider who you are correcting. are they an expert in something where you only have a little bit of experience? then they probably don’t need you to correct them. if you are confused, you can ask for your own clarification – let them be the expert, because suddenly forgetting why this expert is here is dehumanizing to them by dismissing their knowledge. if you are confused, let it be your confusion, don’t try to talk for the group. ‘is not being heard in committee the same as dying in committee?’ is okay. telling a legislator, who knows very well what these things mean, that they mean what they do? that’s belittling her by ignoring her knowledge. similarly, do not ignore someone’s knowledge when you ask for a status update. let the person whose project it is do the updating. if you ignore their role and dehumanize them by writing them out of their own project, you risk doing something like giving completely wrong information which then has to be corrected. that’s not helpful, but instead creating more problems for them because you did not want to acknowledge that someone is in charge of the project they are in charge of.”
but… this whole sneaking around going “but Beeaaaaa, they’re so scarryyyy! you have to go ask them for meeeee!”…? oooh my hackles, they are *up*.
i’m about to be quite mean for a second: that’s weaponizing social skills in a way that doesn’t jive with “but i’m autistic so how was i supposed to know, i am but a poor innocent lamb who needs to be told to not do these things”. oh, Paul knows. i’m not going to say he’s not autistic. i mean, i’m also plenty weird in the brain, and i smell this a mile off. i got to middle school, i developed a special interest in etiquette, and now you can just call me Jim Carrey in green face paint and a banana yellow suit because I’m The Mask, Babeeeyy!. autism isn’t an automatic inability to understand this stuff. some of us even, uh, go slightly the other way. and… Paul has just shown you that he absolutely does not get to use that excuse anymore. he knows the game. he knows how to play it. he is in fact playing it very skillfully and very manipulatively. Paul isn’t pulling these sort of moves by accident – they are doing them with purpose. they’re hustling. just like someone hustling the poker tables, the card sharp can’t claim to just be a total novice who just has beginner’s luck when they are revealed to have won the last five years of poker tournaments here and also have several cards hidden up their sleeve with an elaborate apparatus they use to cheat. the card sharp isn’t ignorant about poker – the card sharp knows it very, *very* well because they can manipulate it so skillfully.
and this behavior is keeping perfectly in pattern with how they already treat you. you get written out of your expert knowledge of knowing the project you’re leading… and you also get written out of the idea that you have anything to do all day than be Paul’s keeper. they believe you’re a repository for busywork whose time does not need to be respected. and when you don’t magically have knowledge that isn’t yours and instead refer him to the people who actually know, you become too scary to talk to directly!
i… don’t know if there’s anything you can say to Paul here. he’s showing that on some fundamental level, he does not respect you and the work you do.
not just that, but they’re playing this little social game where they’re intentionally manipulating people so that they’re the poor innocent and you’re the big scary meanie… while also disrespecting your time, your expertise, and your very role within the organization.
i genuinely do not know how to get someone who is invested in dehumanizing you, and aggravating you for sport, to listen when you need to tell them “stop doing this because it is making my life harder and it is hurtful”. Paul’s kinda invested in making your life harder and being hurtful. it’s fun for them. they are told all the time they need to stop, and they don’t want to. they know enough to manipulate the situation in their favor, and to now make other people agents of the Let’s Disrespect LW’s Time Doing Their Job game by saying how mean you are. they don’t really get to claim ignorance in social situations… and… how do you pull someone back from the brink here?
i don’t know. wish i did, but i really don’t! i expect that if there is a firm answer, every social justice advocate would be very excited to hear that you, idk, do the konami code on people’s earlobes and suddenly their brain reboots in safe mode without the bigotry malware and then they actually listen to people they dehumanize for sport and recognize those groups as equally human. unfortunately i got nothin’. you can’t even smack someone’s temple and taint at the same time to take a screenshot. humans just don’t have very convenient secret keyboard shortcuts.
Paul has, through his own dedication and hard work, grown beyond your means to solve. they’ve gotten into a firm pattern of ignoring you. please point out to your superiors that this isn’t going to work any better than the last hundred times you have already done it. if it needs to be coming from a mouth that isn’t yours, then so be it. (and if Paul suddenly pays attention as soon as someone who identifies as male says it… in the spirit of harmonious coexistence and unity, may i, a humble cishet, cordially invite you to the Feminist Screaming Palapa? we have a custom silk-upholstered tantrum hole. perfectly padded so you can put your face right in there and just scream as loud as you want and as much as you need. it’s stupendous. but before you adjourn to the Feminist Screaming Palapa, point out the pattern once again being reinforced, and i will begin fixing you a mai tai as soon as you text that you’re on your way.)
if you want to go out of your way to be as generous to Paul as possible, and as kind to his neurodiversity as possible… i would point out that another round of Let’s Get LW To Keep Doing The Thing That Doesn’t Work, Once More With Feeling! is pretty mean to Paul if you take them at their word, too. Paul says he is unable to change his behavior due to his autism. okay. this means that your tactics aren’t working and it is frustrating him. why set him up for failure by continuing to do the thing that doesn’t work? why go for this tactic of “second verse, same as the first, little bit faster and a little bit worse”? that’s just expecting him to somehow miraculously be not autistic and sort out his own needs through the power of positive thinking and unicorn farts. if they are genuinely unable, there is no shame in needing more help… and there’s no shame in asking for that accomodation instead of, as has happened here, just vaguely assuming that’s what Paul needs instead of asking him and giving him agency in their own condition’s treatment. but at this point it’s clearly not help that you, as a layperson, can actually give them. it is an unkindness to continue failing Paul in this way and expect them to just… somehow make do regardless. if Paul’s struggles are genuine, it means Paul genuinely needs support, and it means Paul’s support can’t just be the amateur hour clown show of repeated mistakes. Paul deserves the dignity of their troubles actually being considered valid enough to need help. denying Paul this and just handing him yet more of the thing that doesn’t help is kind of like expecting someone starving from a terrible case of celiac disease to just fix it by eating more glutenous gruel. the gluten already hates their intestines! the gluten causing their intestines to self-destruct is a problem! pretending it simply won’t be a problem if we try it for the bajillionth time is being very cruel to the person with celiac, and it’s doing absolutely nothing about their starvation as their intestines decide that the presence of gluten means little tasks like “absorbing nutrients” are for total squares.
tell the organization that it’s not kind to set Paul up for failure by asking you to once again do the thing that isn’t working, that Paul isn’t listening to, that Paul has *refused* to listen to, and that make Paul’s problems worse… and even if they’re going to look to Paul’s welfare and not yours, they have plenty of reasons to handle this properly. but it’s also something that is hurting you, your business here, your ability to do projects and get results, *and* it’s something that is harming connections the org really needs to flourish. (the org that makes a legislator feel insulted and belittled is one she is less likely to take the calls of, for instance.) this issue doesn’t have to be lose-lose, but it *is* only losses all around if they insist on handling it as “LW just has a thing where they hate Paul and Paul thinks they’re super scary and he can’t know what he’s doing wrong even though they tell him so the solution is for her to write down a list of all the things he can’t do, because maybe it’ll work *this* time and he’ll actually listen to them. five hundredth time’s the charm!”.
if your org is a good one – if there’s something there worth sticking around for – then you can, and should, lay this at the feet of someone else to fix, at which point they will leap to fix it. it’s a problem you have tried to fix, and this is bigger than you can deal with; Paul is making a game out of not respecting you trying to fix it, and has moved on to the social manipulation of trying to turn people against you while using them as pawns in the game of Let’s Disrespect LW. you don’t need to continue doing the thing doomed to failure. if the org is a good one, they’re going to have the reaction of “oh my gosh, of COURSE, we’re so sorry we bothered you with this idea, we’ll handle it with Paul right now”. if they don’t… then… tuck and roll on out of there.
i admit that hearing Paul play the social manipulation games like this, and people apparently going along with it – even if not consciously meaning to, but accepting Paul saying “LW is scary! you have to talk to them instead of me! you have to ask them about the project that you know you’re doing and LW doesn’t know about, but do it anyway!”… even if you square it with Bea afterwards… combined with the solution of making a list for Paul, when you’re quite obviously giving him quite a lot of correction anyway? i am concerned that you’ve been written into the org role of They Whomst Wrangle The Paul. it’s smelling to me like they’re gearing up to place all his behavior on you and make it your failure instead. i truly, emphatically, sincerely hope i am wrong and this never comes to pass. but i would keep your head on a swivel for this dynamic – and signs that it’s already here.
tldr: this is many words for essentially “dang, dude… idk” with diversions for hopefully useful specific analysis. if nothing else, please look up the creature called a viscacha for a moment of fluffy zen that you absolutely deserve for enduring this firehose of trying nonsense