I wasn’t born smart enough to understand what sapiosexual really means. It’s definitely not a sexuality because then there must be dummysexuality as well. The youths are unironically calling themselves sapiosexual as if saying, “I am deluded enough to think I know enough and you can impress me even by adding two plus two together, even better if you nod in appreciation when I say intellectual stuff.”
This bold I-only-go-out-with-smart-people crowd opens Hinge chats by asking you what you’re reading these days. They name-drop Kafka and Nietzsche and use the word “nuance” a lot. Like a lot. And they run away from small talk. A 25-year-old ‘sapiosexual’ I know tests her partners by showing black and white YouTube videos of Agnes Varda, asking for intelligent commentary on the craft of the French artist. Pass the oral exam and there’s a whole syllabus to go through. Her favourite relationship activity is doing brainy activities. Like having conversations. Maybe she needs to read up a bit on sapiosexuality.
First of all, the word was coined by an engineer (of course, the brightest of our lot) in 1998. Or so he claims in his 2002 wolfie.boy.livejournal blog. Yes, his online username is wolfieboy and his profile picture is one of him wearing a magician’s hat. But don’t judge him yet, he was going somewhere.
Someone asked him what gender he prefers in sex and/or a relationship. “Me? I don’t care too much about the plumbing. I want an incisive, inquisitive, insightful, irreverent mind. I want someone for whom philosophical discussion is foreplay,” he replied. “I want someone who sometimes makes me go ouch due to their wit and evil sense of humor. I want someone that I can reach out and touch randomly. I want someone I can cuddle with.”
It was a localised delusion until OkCupid blew it up by adding sapiosexual as a preference to match people in 2014. It didn’t take long for straight male engineers and female philosophy majors to run with it. Even Instagram bios of millennials and Gen Z people have sapiosexual in them.
Take this Bumble user’s bio: traveller, sapiosexual and engineer. How are all three possible at once?
Someone on Reddit had had enough, so they wrote, “Calling it a sexuality just means you have the cultural experience of a pencil.” Not to mention it reeks of coloniser-level snobbery.
Also read: Modern lovers don’t kiss and tell. Only ChatGPT knows the relationship problems
The genres of intelligence
Great memes have been created to mock the so-called sapiosexuals. It has also inspired some new word-building. Brontesexual: Attracted to dark, angry men who occasionally hallucinate their dead lost love wandering the moors at midnight.
The way critical thinking and general PR of intelligence has taken a hit in this era, a typical sapiosexual’s heaven is looking a bit worrying. Even Andrew Tate fans call themselves sapiosexual. All while Tate long declared that books are below him. For them, defending any conspiracy theory with enough conviction is a sign of a solid mind.
On the academia front, and those who call themselves “readers”, sapiosexuality has a toxic erotic turn. These professors, researchers and self-proclaimed intellectuals, fiction fanatics and Wikipedia walruses are too cool to entertain anyone who knows less. On fresh reels right now, it’s called the education or literacy gap. These days, it’s really hot to take your date to bars where scholars come to give lectures. Call it cocktails and critique.
“Just don’t mention Murakami to anyone you want to impress, even the ones who haven’t read him know from X that he is jarring,” said a graphic designer in Mumbai who apparently “clicks” better with “reader types”.
A researcher complained to me that her type is nerds, but the ones she attracts tend to get philosophical only when she asks the ‘what are we’ question.
Australian singer Sia has written about the feeling in her song Academia: “And if I am a number, I’m infinity plus one. And if you are five words, you are afraid to be the one.”
After all, what is a sapiosexual if not a basic, bland babe who outsources emotional incompetence to famous dead brains? He’s boring.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)