[He sighs, still wiping thickened blood from his lip with a thumb.] This isn't about being a woman or man. Even if it were, it wouldn't make me see you as any less, one way or the other.

[He's stung even by the suggestion under her question. Sure, he finds her beautiful, and he doesn't see anything inherently wrong in being a woman in the way she does. He also doesn't see her as just a woman and nothing else, with all of the baggage with which she associates the word.]

You just held my shard... Surely you know that if I felt any kind of contempt for you, I'd never allow it. [And if he did, as some kind of trickery, surely his revulsion for her would come through at holding his very soul itself.]