A fantastic primer on atheism and asexuality

I'm going to start a new blogging series, with a fantastic premise:

Suppose that I suddenly acquired a large number of asexual readers.  How would I explain my atheism to them?  Suppose that I suddenly acquired a large number of atheist readers.  How would I explain asexuality to them?

Of course, I mean "fantastic" in the sense of "fantasy".  And it's a rather self-indulgent fantasy, I'll be the first to say.  Furthermore, it seems unnecessary.  Writing a primer doesn't require a large readership by any means!  But in practice, I tend to write very differently depending on who I think my audience is.

The "fantastic" aspect also allows me to drift from the series' fictitious purpose.  I'm not really writing this to educate other people, so it's okay if I miss some details, or if I present a rather one-sided perspective.  It's okay if the series is considerably longer than any primer ought to be.  The real purpose is for my own enjoyment.  It offers opportunities for me to explore my interests: intersectionality, and comparisons between movements.  And if some people find it useful as a real primer too, that's fine by me.

Feel free to play along with the scenario by asking questions.  Perhaps I will pretend that dozens of people asked the same question you did.

This introduction is incomplete without pointing out that one of the fictional scenarios is less fantastic than the other.  While I am not a well-known atheist blogger, I am a relatively well-known asexual blogger.

Ref: Asexuality 101 (my real primer on asexuality)

The Fantastic Primer series:
1. Introduction
2. Why I don't trust you
3. Yes, I'm one of those atheists
4. A skeptically-oriented Asexuality 101 
5. Atheism as minority, atheism as political cause
6. Atheism and asexuality: a historical comparison 
7. Why atheism and asexuality taste great together

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.