Is Sapiosexuality Real Or Just Condescending?

Sapiosexuality is one of the newer sexual orientations, but it’s stirred up a lot of controversy. For those of you who don’t know what sapiosexuality is, a sapiosexual is a person who finds intelligence to be the most sexually attractive feature about a person, and who will become sexually aroused by displays of cleverness and smart interactions. These are people who literally value beauty over brains, and some sapiosexuals claim that physical attraction doesn’t have any bearing on their choice of partners at all. Some aren’t really worried about gender, either.While sapiosexuality as a concept has been around since 1998, the modern version surging all over the Internet isn’t just a play on pansexuality, it’s a really exclusionary movement that basically amounts to putting a sign on your genitals saying, “your IQ must be this big to ride this ride.” The question here is about if sapiosexuality is real or not, and while we can say that the concept is real, the modern idea of what it is is definitely condescending, and here’s how.

The word “sapiosexual” was invented in 1998. Livejournal user Wolfieboy claims to have invested it them, and the word comes from the root “sapiens” which means “discerning, wise or judicious.” However, the word has been surging in popularity since late 2014 thanks to OKCupid making it an option for sexual orientations that users could identify as.

Now, sapiosexuality is everywhere. The word shows up everywhere from Tinder to Twitter to Tumblr, and it’s just indicative of how many people identify with this. People everywhere are now alleging that they’d rather bypass the sexting in favor of intense literary or philosophical discussion.

You might find that you identify with this yourself. After all, who isn’t attracted to intelligence? Isn’t it normal to be attracted to how a person thinks? You’d be correct, intelligence is just once facet of what we find attractive in other people.

Sapiosexuality is not the same as pansexuality or demisexuality. Demisexuality is when you’re attracted to someone regardless of gender because you know them well enough and have established a connection that facilitates sexual attraction. Pansexuality is being attracted to someone regardless of gender. Sapiosexuality, on the other hand, is all about intelligence.

However, all is not well with sapiosexuality. The modern interpretation of sapiosexuality seems like something we can all get behind, but in reality, it’s not all that great for anyone. Why, you ask? Primarily because it’s extremely elitist and even a little discriminatory.

Dating is about learning from people who are different. Primarily, it’s about learning from people who are different from you, who have something to teach you. Only limiting your dating pool to those who can name every element in the periodic table or recite Shakespeare backwards in pig latin is a pretty terrible way to dismiss those who have a different sort of intelligence from you.

Chemistry can be had regardless of intelligence. So you’re a super smart person who loves reading and having cerebral discussions. Great! That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have chemistry with someone who doesn’t like those things, or who’s less traditionally intelligent. Ruling that out out of hand is doing a disservice to yourself.

Traditional intelligence isn’t the only thing that makes a relationship great. Sure, a person’s intellectual IQ can be through the roof, but if their emotional IQ is on the floor, their mental intelligence actually won’t mean all that much. Intellectual discussions aren’t the only thing that make life in relationships great, and you never want to rob yourself of that.

Street smarts are a thing. There are types of intelligences that don’t necessarily fall into the traditional intellectual banner, but are still markers of intelligence. This is where we go back to the idea of learning from people who are different from us, because people with street smarts but who aren’t necessarily the greatest readers or philosophers are people with an intelligence that a lot of intellectuals have yet to master. Assuming that intelligence is just one thing is actually sort of ableist, too.

There’s more than one way to live life as a smart person. The Sapiosexual test that constantly makes its rounds on the Internet has some weird markers for intelligence. What does dressing intelligently even mean? Perhaps it’s just dressing like a hipster, or wearing thick rimmed glasses? Either way, it’s kind of elitist, and this is where the problem with sapiosexuality lies.

You don’t have to have the best grammar to be smart. One marker of sapiosexuality is “speaking eloquently.” First off, many intellectual people dismiss some eloquent speakers because of their vernacular, so eloquence is very much a relative concept. On top of that, smart people live all kinds of lives, and sticking to a narrow definition of intelligence isn’t just elitist, it’s dumb, because you’re cutting yourself off from lots of people you could really connect with.

Let’s talk about intelligence in general. People have this idea that mind games are a marker of intelligence. They can be, but they’re not just markers of intelligence, they’re markers that that person is really manipulative. Straightforward people are just as capable of being intelligent, and you have the luxury of knowing that they mean what they say.

Complex discussions aren’t monopolized by intellectuals. I’ve had discussions about "Love and Hip Hop" that are just as complex as my discussions of the nuances of The Brothers Karamzov and American history. Many sapiosexuals show themselves to have a terrible sense of what adult intelligence really is, and it shows when they explain their sexuality with such inanities as "I prefer complex discussion over a glass of wine, than vapid navel-gazing at a restaurant."

Sapiosexuality seems to draw a line in the sand. That line is clearly delineated between thinking and feeling. To have a relationship, you need to be both, or at least pick a partner that balances you out in that sense. Sapiosexuality is really black and white when it comes to matters of the mind vs matters of the heart.

If you’re turned on by intelligence and are a sapiosexual, more power to you. However, if you’re closing yourself off to people whose intelligence just isn’t quite like yours (because you have this idea of what intelligence is supposed to be), you’re doing yourself a disservice. You’re living in a big, wide world. And you should want to be able to explore it without acting like you’re above it all.