For Section 377’s Sake, ‘Sapiosexual’ Isn’t a Sexual Identity

Let’s clear the air once and for all — ‘sapiosexual’ isn’t a thing.

Are you a ‘sapiosexual’? 

(Photo: The Quint/Erum Gour)

TL;DR: ‘Sapiosexuals’, you are not turning anyone on. Up there or down south.

Trust is a fast depleting reserve. There are way too many channels out there to get me a date and self-identified sapiosexuals aren’t helping anyone’s libidinal cause.

A dating bio that reads ‘sapiosexual’ can be likened to a Halloween costume donned at an Indian wedding. You will be painfully sized up at the very doorstep of a self-sanctioned audit.  Although, if I may dare, a Halloween costume at an Indian wedding is quite a common sight.

Anyway, a ‘sapiosexual’ identifies as someone attracted to the smarts. You know, the ‘life of the mind’, intellectual stimulation, and all of that over every other attribute in a person.

The avocado toast of dating apps, the brawn of irredeemable bios, and the death-knell of clarity, sapiosexuals came, but did not conquer.

(GIF: Giphy)

My concerns:

If sapiosexuals are attracted to smart people, the rest of us, by way of exclusion, are attracted to... gorgeous bleating goats/bots/pumpkins?

Everyone likes a smart person, right? Making that one’s primary litmus test reeks of an elitism that can be likened to folks who make “Exotic Traveller” or “Pumpkin Latte Lover” or “Grammar Nazi” their predominant criteria.

We are really just closing shop and narrowing the berth, shoving out so many people who could not only be smarter than us, but also choose to stay away from someone who claims they ONLY like “smart people”.

Most importantly, does the ‘brains-over-brawns’ theory justify co-opting a sexual identity when thousands are braving voiceless days?

Yesterday, in a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court partially struck down the draconian law that criminalised same-sex relationships in India.

At a time like this, we need to realise that the suffix ‘-sexual’ is not an attachment by design, but by default. We are who we are on account of our sexual orientations and ‘sapiosexual’ isn’t counted as one. Neither are ‘technosexuals’, ‘frustosexuals’, ‘autosexuals’, ‘retrosexuals’, and ‘cosmosexuals’.

(GIF: Giphy)

If we have to, can’t we just say we are into smart men/women? Need we add a suffix that sounds like all living matter died in the face of unbearable sentimentalism?

Once, I bumped into a boy at a grocery store who claimed, after shooting me a  convinced look, that he had dazzled me with a self-congratulatory smile, he was (a) ‘Sapio’. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought that’s what Mama had named the poor boy.  That conversation had ended really fast.

In a short story titled The Whore of Mensa (1974), Woody Allen describes incidents that unfold like a sex racket wherein a private investigator has been hired to expose all of it.

But...

Lo and behold!

Instead of physical intercourse, the men and women engage in intellectual intercourse. Yep, that’s right. The men pay to have an intellectually stimulating conversation with a woman (of their choice) and she discusses what he wants her to, right from Shakespeare to Melville to Milton, at a price.

(GIF: Giphy)

So, simply put, Allen’s artistic vision had foreseen a polished version of a ‘Sapio Paradise’ without Adam or Eve biting into the Forbidden Fruit? This was 34 years back.   

In Allen’s story, Flossie, the ‘Madam’ with a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature, allows clients to indulge in a range of activities, according to the tariff card. One can take a look at a girl’s PhD for some extra bucks or even watch her have an anxiety attack. One can even pick her up from a designated museum frequented by the intelligentsia and then later discuss literary themes with her, in accordance with one’s desires.

Flossie is also known to blackmail clients who don’t pay up — with tapes that would give away the fact that they are cheating on their wives intellectually.   

In Allen’s narrative, the ‘services’ provided are tinged with a stain of mechanical boredom, having grown tired of the same conversations with multiple people in a day. The girl whom the private investigator meets in a hotel room rants off analyses with lazy interest and visible lethargy. The story ends with the PI having exposed Madam Flossie and her racket.

Interesting, right?

Coming back to our 21st century buzzword for intellectual stimulation,

‘Sapiosexuals’ of the dating world, would you...

Care to shed the name in the name of the  ongoing movements fighting for basic liberties? (And a better dating life, of course.)

You can have all the intellectual stimulation you want, but it does not have to be your USP. It is almost as if you are saying, “I am attracted to a good person.” Everyone is!  We all love deep conversations and intelligence but that is a preference, not our sexual identity in relation to the gender we are attracted to.

Bottom Line: Shed the label, guys!

(The above is a part of TLDR (Too Long. Didn't Read), a weekly blog that aims to crunch things down for you. I will give you the long and short of most things that need to be taken extremely seriously like your bookshelf, beer, existential dread, aimless conversations, rainy days and bubble-wrap. I promise to cater to all readers, but I brazenly harbour a soft-spot for skimmers, bathroom-readers and infinite scrollers. Now, let's bring the written word back!

P.S: Follow me @medhac1)