Here's a personal story.

I'm a male nurse. It's unspoken, but wherever I'm working, I'll generally take on any personal procedures with the men over the women. This is even more so enforced when the patient is younger than 30. And rightfully so, no woman in their 20's wants me doing anything too personal if it can be helped.

In my situation, I did know the patient was gay. Not because of his outlandish hairstyle, or camp mannerisms (I've been very wrong making assumptions based on these traits, so I try not to) but on the things he was saying to me). I'm a guy and I'm a nurse, people can be forgiven for making a guess at my sexuality. Now think of how a pervy guy might treat a young and attractive female nurse, and transfer it to this patient and myself. I kept a cool face when he asked about my personal life and relationship status. I remained calm when he started to comment on (and rate) my physical features. When he touched my ass I politely told him that if I had done that to a woman I would be up for sexual assault and be very close to losing my registration. I kept my cool.

I have no idea how he found out about this (everything I said was away from patients ears, but some people just can't help themselves ffs), but when I refuse to "install" his catheter, I got called every name under the sun by him. I got told that I think a lot of myself. I got called a homophobe. I got some pretty disgusting comments form someone who had obviously ignored my previous reactions to his behaviour and possibly felt turned down. And of course, I got reported for a bad attitude and discrimination.

The meeting went very, very similar to your own.

making room for an immature boy's feelings

Rings home pretty hard. I've amazingly had similar situations occur before and after this one, but this was definitely the worst. This is most definitely life, as your question put it. No matter how professional we remain, we are going to have some pretty ridiculous claims made against us, especially in your own setting, working with people who are yet to mature, but may not realise it yet. That's why we need to keep professional at all times, and hope that we will have colleagues and superiors which see a situation for what it is and know to deal with it responsibly. Unfortunately, too many will want to placate the real offender and let us take the biggest fall.