Are You A Sapiosexual?

Let’s hope we all are.

Merriam-Webster’s has yet to acknowledge the neologism at all. But Wiktionary defines a sapiosexual as a “person sexually attracted to intelligence or the human mind.” My first reaction to reading this was that it was essentially pointless and redundant rhetoric if not complete horse shit. Collins’ online dictionary offers a slightly more flexible definition of the word: “One who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature.”…

Sex therapist Chris Donaghue maintains that labeling yourself a sapiosexual is a lazy, limiting, and potentially detrimental marketing ploy. “Attraction and chemistry happen on psychological and physical levels,” he said. “It’s just not realistic to think that one is going to ignore physical attraction or lack thereof due to an intensive psychological attraction—as though that intellectual interest overpowers everything else. At some point, [couples] end up in my office: Great conversation. No physical attraction. No sexual chemistry.”

There are those who find the notion of sapiosexuality not only shortsighted but discriminatory—particularly ableist. The argument goes like this: By desiring only the, um, intellectually well-endowed, so-called sapiosexuals are somehow rejecting the intellectually and developmentally disabled. This logic is, at best, flawed if not deeply problematic in its own right since it implies that the developmentally disabled possess no form of classifiable or viable intelligence—or that there is any such thing as universally understood intelligence.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.