You’re Not A Sapiosexual. You’re Pretentious.

I’m a mundusexual.

What does that mean, you might ask? Well, it’s a word I just made up that says I’m only attracted to people with proper hygiene. 

It’s stupid, isn’t it? Isn’t everyone attracted to people with proper hygiene? Are there people out there who prefer someone who doesn’t wipe their ass properly? (Probably, but that would be their own niche fetish and the exception, not the rule.)

That’s how you sound when you call yourself a sapiosexual on your dating profiles. For those of you who are smart but not pretentious, “sapiosexual” is a word that didn’t exist ten years ago that simply means you are attracted to intelligence. It’s taken off in dating as the go-to phrase to show that you’re all about the brains. You know, as you swipe left and right on someone based purely on their picture? It’s fucking stupid.

Ten years ago, you would have had to say “I find intelligence attractive,” and you would have been met with a resounding “NO SHIT” because it’s that obvious. But now there’s a fancy word for it that sounds smart, even though it’s a fake fucking word, and you can use it to weed out people who . . . don’t know what the fake word means? If they have to ask you, it means they’re not smart enough, right? 

I know there are people reading this right now who are getting defensive. They don’t feel like they’re pretentious and they honestly do feel like they are attracted to intelligence primarily. I believe you. But don’t say you’re sapiosexual. Just swipe in the superficial way dating apps are designed, and then use the conversation when you match to see if you’re attracted to them.  Because it’s rarely about actual intelligence. It’s about how they can hold a conversation with you.

If you’re a relatively smart person who loves to read English literature for fun, appreciates art for the sake of art, and loves period pieces, are you going to be sexually attracted to someone who’s a nuclear physicist, thinks art is a waste of time because it’s irrational, and is a futurist? No.  You’re going to be attracted to someone who has similar interests (not necessarily identical, but enough similar ones), the ability to hold a conversation about those topics, and a social outlook that’s similar to yours. That’s what people mean when they say they’re a sapiosexual. They mean that they’re looking for someone with intellectual curiosity on par with their own.

Why do I have this problem with a single word? Two reasons. First, I thought it was a great word at first and even used it in my dating profile! Then I began to match with women who used it in their profiles, and I didn’t personally find a single one of those matches to be the slightest bit engaging. Not one. They were either shallow and obsessed with their multiple degrees (always from barely or non-accredited institutions), incapable of having any conversation that wasn’t rife with errors or relying on emoji to make their point, or perhaps intelligent but with such poor conversation skills that I couldn’t stand talking to them.

Secondly, I began to notice people discussing their sapiosexuality (okay, just typing that made me vomit in my mouth a little) always seemed to prize institutionalized education over actual intelligence. Listen – I attended a top liberal arts college and a top law school. I spent my formative years entrenched in institutionalized education, and let me inform you now that there are a LOT of dumb motherfuckers out there with degrees. I’m talking “shouldn’t procreate because they’ll devolve the human race” dumb, and they have a degree. A college degree (or a doctorate for that matter) has NOTHING to do with intelligence. There are people out there with real-world experience who can do things I can’t even imagine how to do. People with raw intelligence who see the world with a perspective to which we can only aspire. And so many of these self-professed sapiosexuals would miss out on actual intelligence in their misguided pursuit of dumb motherfuckers with degrees.

We get it. You want someone you can talk to, who’s on your level. Join the rest of the fucking human race. And before you get too annoyed with me, I’m not saying that every person who says they’re a sapiosexual is a pretentious, condescending idiot who isn’t nearly as smart as they think they are. I’m saying that most of them are. The rest of you have good intentions but no awareness of how it comes off, and now’s your time to make things right.

 

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