My homophobia diary

I occasionally encounter homophobic comments when me and my boyfriend are out in public.  If it happened all the time, I would find it very disturbing, but fortunately, we mostly hang out in San Francisco.  So it doesn't happen very often and I can laugh it off.

Since our relationship started two years ago, I've taken to keeping a little diary of these comments.  The last time I posted this diary was at the end of 2011.

But in 2012, something funny happened: there was only one entry, in January. The next time I encountered a homophobic comment was last week, April 2013.

The difference between 2012 and 2011 (1 time vs 5 times) is statistically significant.  What happened?

The optimistic possibility is that San Francisco reached a tipping point of some sort.  But maybe there's another explanation.  Perhaps our PDA is less obvious than it used to be, or we're not going out as often.  Or maybe I've become deaf to homophobia.  Or maybe the whole city's already seen us snogging, so no one is shocked anymore!

Here are the two new entries:

January 2012:
As we're walking to the train, we're talking about Tolkien, and to what extent he might have invented various fantasy archetypical races.  A high school kid asks us, "Hey, were you guys just holding hands?"  "Yes!" says my boyfriend, as we walk by.  "You're fucking faggots!" he yells at our backs repeatedly.

April 2013:
We're on the train, talking about strategies in Eminent Domain, a deck-building game.  A woman says in a low voice, right as she's stepping out of the car, "You're disgusting to look at."  My boyfriend didn't hear her and I had to tell him afterwards.

I like my new idea of noting our conversation topic in my diary.  There's a dissonance between what we were doing before, and the homophobia, and this dissonance is aesthetically pleasing to me.