Not at all, it's much simpler and much worse than that:

The GIMP developers have heard both kinds of arguments MANY times before, as well all the arguments for using pie menus based on usability and scientific measurements of controlled experiments and decades of experience developing and using user interface toolkits and applications, from me and many other people, and at this point they are just cutting off noses to spite their face, not listening to any arguments about usability or anything else, because they have decided that somebody else once hurt their feelings by asking for the exact same thing for the wrong reasons (or as you literally say, simply without extensive justification), so they got permanently huffy with their panties in a twist, and always say no to everyone who ever asks the same question ever again no matter what their arguments about usability or experience with user interface design.

Pie Menus: A 30 Year Retrospective.
By Don Hopkins, Ground Up Software, May 15, 2018.

https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menus-936fed383ff1

That's even what your tone policing argument literally says, so you've just made my point for me! They've been asked in both ways many times before, yet they reject all the reasonable well justified requests, because they once had an unreasonable request (or simply brief requests missing pages of explanations and citations I like to provide, that they don't even bother reading anyway).

Not every user has studied human computer interaction and written many papers and articles about it like I have, and can articulate (or cares to take the time to articulate) exactly what their reasons are. They just love Photoshop or pie menus because it works well for them, and they can't explain why, or just don't have the time. And that's no excuse for not listening to their users.

The GIMP developers are TERRIBLE at listening to their users, which is a fatal flaw and mortal sin for user interface designers, and that's a hard cold fact. If they were competent empathic UI designers, they would have already pro-actively researched Photoshop and pie menus and many other competing designs, already know what the issues and trade-offs were, and make conscious informed decisions. But they're not, and they don't.

But fortunately the Blender developer are the exact opposite. For example, they've adopted the standard right mouse button click conventions and pie menus and other features that their users demanded, and they think deeply about the trade-offs and issues of making it more like competing products like Maya and 3dsmax, and they have very good reasons for doing things the way they do, and articulate those reasons clearly and calmly and maturely, instead of simply throwing temper tantrums and stubbornly inflicting revenge for people occasionally asking them for features impolitely or without sufficient explanation years ago, like the GIMP developers always do.

The GIMP developer's behavior is exactly the same line of argument I so often hear from racist Trump supporters, who claim they aren't actually racist, but somebody forced them to be racist because they were once impolite to them about their support of Trump (which they deserve for being racist and purposefully impolite to other people), so they got offended and doubled down, trying to blame their acknowledged racism on somebody else not being nice to them (i.e. tone policing), instead of taking responsibility for their own decision to be racist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing

You don't get to be absolved of making stupid decisions on your own by being stubborn and not listening, just because you want to punish people for asking you not nicely enough once. Nobody forced Trump supporters to be racist, and nobody forced GIMP developers to ignore all the perfectly valid arguments about Photoshop's and pie menu's usability, just because somebody wasn't sufficiently nice to them once.