In defence of sapiosexuality
cn: discussion of racism, classism and ableism; cultural beauty standards; sexualities
‘Sapiosexuality’ is attraction to intelligence. People who identify as sapiosexual are drawn towards smart people, or people with whom they share an intellectual connection. Many people, however, think that it’s bad to identify as sapiosexual – that it’s not a real or valid sexual identity, or that it’s based on incorrect and harmful beliefs about intelligence and value. In this post, I defend sapiosexuality against some common criticisms.
First up, why are you dying on this hill?
I don’t identify as sapiosexual myself, but I am often attracted to people who seem really smart, or with whom I connect intellectually, so perhaps I want to defend that tendency.
Also, identity labels can be incredibly important — they help us understand ourselves and connect to others like us. We need an exceptionally good reason, I think, to forbid people from using an identity label that’s meaningful to them. And the most common arguments against sapiosexuality are bad, but difficult to argue against. They are difficult to argue against because sapiosexuality is claimed to be racist, classist and ableist, and so anyone who defends it risks being tarred with those insalubrious brushes. No-one wants to be seen as the defender of racism, classism and ableism in front of their peers. There is thus strong social pressure, in some leftist and liberal circles, to accept the arguments that sapiosexuality is bad.
Of course, if something is in fact racist, classist or ableist, we should call it out as such. But there should also be space to say, in a quiet voice, ‘….ok, but is it, though?’
In the rest of this post, I go through some popular arguments against sapiosexuality and explain why I think they don’t work.
The snobbery objection
‘Self-identified sapiosexuals are attracted not to people’s souls, as they claim, but to the aesthetic trappings of intelligence, i.e., being “well-spoken”, having a college degree, liking poetry and opera, being “classy”, that sort of thing. These are all middle- or upper-class signifiers, hence, sapiosexuality is classist. People are more likely to have this type of “intelligent aesthetic” — and particularly, to have graduated from an elite university — if they are white and neurotypical — hence it is racist and ableist.’
I agree with lots of this, actually.
If a person thinks that ‘being intelligent’ means ‘being a white neurotypical Baudelaire-quoting Yale graduate’, and ‘finding intelligence attractive’ means ‘finding these qualities, and only these qualities, attractive’ — then yes, they are probably somewhat racist, ableist and classist. It’s valid to be into white neurotypical Baudelaire-quoting Yale graduates — we can’t help who we’re attracted to — but gussying that up with the more palatable-sounding ‘I’m attracted to intelligence’ seems wrong. I can understand why this rubs people up the wrong way. Moreover, lots of self-identified sapiosexuals probably really are just looking for people with this upper-middle-class intellectual aesthetic. For example, there are dating sites for people who attended Oxbridge or the Ivy League, which is eye-roll-worthy at best.
Some people do (incorrectly) equate ‘having a degree from an elite university’ with ‘intelligence’. This is bad. And elite universities do sometimes discriminate against working class, non-white, disabled and neurodivergent people. In particular, I know many disabled, mentally ill, and neurodivergent people who have had to drop out of elite universities because of the universities’ pigheaded refusal to accommodate them and their overly-narrow definition of academic aptitude or success. This is a great injustice and a travesty, a source of immense misery and a squandering of human potential.
So, I agree with sapiosexuality-sceptics on a lot of things — I just don’t think that all of this adds up to ‘sapiosexuality is bad per se’. Suppose that a person has a broad idea of what intelligence can look like, and believes that people of all races, classes, and educational backgrounds can be smart. Let’s also suppose that they are in fact often attracted to people outside of the white-middle-class-neurotypical stereotype above; perhaps they themselves don’t fit that description. Is it inherently problematic for this person to use the label sapiosexual?
Sure, some sapiosexuals are bigoted pretentious arseholes — but some lesbians are transphobic, some gay men are racist, some straight and bi people are objectifying or abusive. That doesn’t mean that it is per se problematic to identify as lesbian, gay, straight or bi.
The ‘intelligence is a social construct’ objection
At this point, my imaginary interlocutor has a more subtle objection:
‘It makes no sense to say that you are attracted to intelligence, because the concept of intelligence is incoherent. It is a social construct, invented for sinister racist, classist and ableist motives. Everyone is intelligent in some way, so saying “I’m attracted to intelligence” is just like saying “I’m attracted to people”, i.e., meaningless.’
I’m sympathetic to the idea that everyone is intelligent in their own way; certainly, intelligence has many facets and dimensions. People can be intelligent even if they are not ‘booksmart’, or if they don’t score highly on IQ tests. But I think the concept of sapiosexuality is compatible with this view, if we refine the definition a little:
Sapiosexuals are attracted to people who seem intelligent to them.
Compare beauty. Most people are attracted to others’ physical features, and will often find people beautiful. Yet beauty, too, comes in a variety of forms and is substantially socially constructed. Though beauty standards exist, and some people are widely agreed to be exceptionally beautiful or handsome, we’re often attracted to people with everyday, ‘average’ looks, and lots of people are specifically attracted to traits that are not considered ‘conventionally attractive’. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Yet we can still talk of people ‘being attracted to beauty’.
As I understand it, sapiosexuals are instead most often attracted to mental features: their attraction is based on ‘finding people smart’. Similarly, this doesn’t require us to believe that some people are objectively more intelligent than others, or that we can rank people by intelligence on a single scale.
‘Ah, but don’t you think that what people “find smart” is influenced by racist, classist, and ableist stereotypes about intelligence?’
I mean, probably. But what people “find beautiful” is also influenced by cultural stereotypes about beauty or aesthetics, and these can be racist, fatphobic, transphobic, homophobic, classist, ableist, you-name-it. The problem isn’t with ‘attraction to intelligence’, but ‘attraction’, full stop: it ALL tends to be a bit arbitrary, a bit fetishistic, in ways that favour dominant social groups at the expense of oppressed ones.
This side of attraction is underdiscussed. I think societal beauty standards are really bad, and we should have a feminist revival of anger about them. Having cultural norms which ‘focus’ people’s attraction on certain traits — whether physical, mental, or other — creates desire-inequality: ‘beautiful’ or ‘attractive’ people are objectified, pestered, constantly hit-on, exploited, or even sexually harassed, whereas ‘ugly’ or ‘unattractive’ people can find it hard to get romantic and sexual partners, and can even be discriminated against in non-sexual settings. No-one wins.
So it is worth interrogating where our ‘spontaneous’ desires and attractions come from, and whether they might have unsavoury origins — or at least be unfair. But it’s wrong that only sapiosexuals get flak for this. All of us are shallow to some extent; all of our attractions are somewhat arbitrary. I don’t know what the solution is, but I’d say it starts with being open-minded and kindly curious about our natural attractions, and treating each other kindly and respectfully, both those we do want to date and/or fuck, and those we don’t.
The ‘dating preference’ objection
‘Sapiosexuality is a dating preference, not a sexuality! If you want to date intelligent people, fine, but it’s ridiculous to say that this is your sexuality — if I like dating blondes, I’m not a blonde-sexual’.
Well, first, I bite the bullet that if people want to identify as a blonde-sexual, they can if they want? Things don’t have to be exactly analogous to homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality, to be valid and useful sexual-preferences labels. There are lots of interesting things one can say about sexuality beyond ‘what gender(s) are you attracted to?’ and ‘are you asexual or not?’. Our gender-based sexuality labels are cultural constructs — useful ones, but still artefacts of the present time and place. An ancient Greek man who desired his wife but also flirted with younger men wouldn’t think of himself as ‘bisexual’; the Greeks didn’t have the concept of ‘gay, bi or straight’, because they didn’t attach saliency to the gender(s) that a person desired.
Second, I don’t think attraction to intelligence is just a dating preference for self-identified sapiosexuals. I think people can find (subjective) intelligence sexy. Like, literally sexy. I think that people can get aroused by intelligence (and other mental or personality traits), the same way they can get aroused by a beautiful face or a chiselled chest.
In other contexts, we are used to the idea that people can be aroused by non-physical traits. For example, many people are into sexual dominance or submission. Kinky people can have physical preferences too, of course, but if you find it intuitive that a person can be sexy because they are dominant or submissive, it shouldn’t be too outlandish that a person can be attracted to (perceived) intelligence or intellectual connection.
I think some people find the idea of being physically turned-on by non-physical features squicky, or at least extremely cringe. But disgust reactions to a thing aren’t arguments that it is bad. I find certain kinks squicky or weird, but that doesn’t give me the right to shame people who are into them.
The ‘invading the LGBTQ+ community’ objection
‘Sapiosexuals are just straight people who want to be part of the LGBTQ+ community. This is bad because they take up space and air and energy and resources.’
To the extent that this happens, it’s bad. I’m not convinced that straight cis sapiosexuals are oppressed, and even if they are, their oppression is probably different enough to homophobic oppression that they’ll be fighting on different fronts from the LGBTQ+ community. But the result of this is ‘straight cis sapiosexuals should not identify as LGBTQ’, not ‘sapiosexuality isn’t a thing’.
We might compare being polyamorous. Straight cis polyamorous people aren’t LGBTQ; but polyamory exists as a distinct relationship style, and some people (including me) see being polyamorous or monogamous as a sexual orientation. If a straight poly person claimed to be LGBTQ, I’d dispute that; but that doesn’t mean that ‘being polyamorous’ isn’t a thing.
Are there any other objections to sapiosexuality that I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments.