A Negative Reaction

Me, discussing a male friend’s girlfriend while he was out of the room: she’s almost as butch as I am.
Another male friend: to be fair, I know lots of women that are butcher than you are.
Me: to be fair, I’m partly butch and partly male.

Conversation explosion. He was afronted by the statement and started to ask how I could be male as I am physically female, I was sputtering as I couldn’t believe that I just said something like that in such context to a friend I don’t know very well, and a female friend that knows me fairly well interjected herself into the conversation and ended it as she is aware of my lack of definite gender identity.

It’s a hard reality when you realize that your tight circle of people that know/understand you doesn’t extend very far. It does make me desire to tell people how I identify as male, in a serious context- but I don’t want to just say something now and then in a couple months ask them again to refer to me with male pronouns and use a chosen name… and I’m not ready to ask for that yet.  I just want to be sure.