There might be a vocabulary gap here around the word "request", and what that means.

A request, of any kind, always includes the option to say "no", or it's not a request.

Remember the line in Beauty & The Beast when he says, "You will join me for dinner. That's not a request!"

In that case, it's a demand.

The rigidity that I have noticed in autistic people is an intense dislike of change. That's very different from autocratic behaviour, which I have noticed in someone I strongly suspect is autistic, but those statements of needs are framed as demands, not requests: "you will take me to the zoo later."

One of the nuances of allistic behaviour is the scale from demand to request, and the terminology involved in each.

A minor request is, functionally, the same as a demand. There is, of course, always the option to say 'no', but if it is minor, then the idea of expecting agreement is logical - to do otherwise is usually unreasonable.

"Can you pass me that pen?" is a minor request.

"Can we move to Denmark?" is a major request.

Then, in the middle, is a sliding scale of middling options where the general rule is that the more outrageous the request, the pushback you should expect to receive.

If I have a meeting at 3pm and ask my husband to collect our child from the school nearby, I immediately expect him to agree and do it, unless he has a very good reason not to.

That's how minor requests work.