What I was pointing out is that the recognition that you've given in this answer was (to my eyes at least) hard to find in the original story, thereby making it harder to understand the nature of the tradeoffs.

But now you've done so, which I think better positions the reader to think about the complexity of the situation. There is a tradeoff being made, and any account that says "100% my way all the time" is likely to be wrong...but it's good to grasp the nature of the competing issues.

I agree that having a more effusive acceptance of a neither-100%-masculine-and-male-nor-feminine-and-female category might be a very much better way to handle things. It would be interesting to study. I can also imagine it making things worse (in that the more ideals you have, the more opportunities you have to feel like you're being pushed by society towards the wrong ideal).

Finally, I'd just like to point out that although physical safety in general does and should have a higher priority than emotional validation, the stress of rejection is not completely negligible even from a health-and-safety standpoint (depression, suicide, higher risks of cardiovascular problems, higher risk of cancer, etc.). So this too is a real tradeoff: you can't just decide it 100% in one direction and come up with the best balance. (I'm not saying that you claimed this...just pointing out for readers that this too is an area where things are not as simple as it might initially seem.) Neither extreme is correct, as I think you were pointing out (but hard to tell, as you only talked about one extreme as being incorrect).