Jury’s out on the ‘swiping smart’ trend among online daters
Describing oneself as sapiosexual is the latest way to stand out from commoners on apps for singles
According to his Tinder profile, Liam Nelson, 26, likes good music and good food. He dislikes bad music and bad food. He also considers himself sapiosexual.
To Nelson, who is straight and works as a recruiter in Toronto, this means not necessarily a woman’s IQ but her emotional maturity and open-mindedness. He knows it’s entirely subjective.
“It’s no different from saying, ‘I’m attracted to brunettes.’ It’s not some sort of strict rule. It’s what we know about ourselves in terms of what tends to push our buttons in order to feel attraction,” Nelson says.
“Sapiosexual” refers to those who are “sexually attracted to highly intelligent people,” according to Merriam-Webster. Derived from the Latin for wise, sapiosexuality is technically genderless and has been adopted by straight and nonstraight people alike.
While the concept of sapiosexuality isn’t new, it’s become a common declaration on dating apps, alongside a user’s height and assurances that, no, the baby in the photo is not their own.
Because it’s 2017, there is, of course, an app for this. Sapio, designed for those “sick of superficial hookup apps,” officially launched this year and claims to have signed up 50,000 new users in the last month, mostly in North America.
“Sapiosexual” was defined as early as 2004 on Urban Dictionary as “one who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature.”
The definition has been updated several times in the last few years to take on a more cynical tone appropriate for the digital age. From 2015: “Something you put on your dating profile if you want to be pretentious.”
From 2016: “For many, defining oneself as sapiosexual is also a statement against the current status quo of hookup culture and superficiality, where looks are prized above all else.”
Whether sapiosexuality is indeed a true orientation, a preference or just a new way to brag remains to be seen. Some critics say sapiosexuality is ableist and possibly discriminatory, as intelligence comes in many forms.
“The saying ‘smart is sexy’ is problematic because you’re insinuating (probably subconsciously) that those who aren’t ‘traditionally’ smart are less attractive,” wrote one commenter on a Facebook thread. The website Bustle called sapiosexuality “the worst dating trend” because it seems exclusionary.
Lindsay Gonder, 33, says she always swipes left on — ignores — self-proclaimed sapiosexuals. She started seeing the label on Tinder a year ago and doesn’t like what it implies: the pressure to perform “being smart” in order to appear attractive to someone else. “You want my body and now you want my mind, too?” says Gonder, who works at a Toronto university and is straight.
She also rejects the idea that intelligence and sex are mutually exclusive.
“I can be intelligent and just want to hook up, and it’s my decision,” Gonder says. “Relationships and dating are fluid.”
Intelligence is an increasingly desirable trait in a partner, according to what’s known as the American mate selection survey. Various researchers have used the questionnaire once a decade since the 1930s.
The most recent analysis, pub- lished in 2015 in the Journal of Family Issues, found men ranked “education and intelligence” fourth, up from 11th in 1939. Women ranked intelligence fifth, up from ninth 80 years ago. (Both sexes have ranked mutual love and attraction first since the 1980s.)
Some individuals are attracted to social or emotional intelligence; others to intelligence based on education or intellect, says Florida-based Sapio co-founder Kristin Tynski.
Sapio users are encouraged to answer questions such as, “What is the purpose of life?” and “What’s most wrong with your generation?” and “What would your parents be most surprised to learn about you?” Users can then search for matches based on responses.
“There’s no blanket, universal definition of intelligence,” Tynski says.
And self-described sapiosexuals who spoke to the Star said the attraction was less about having an advanced degree than about someone’s perspective or curiosity about the world.
Of course, there’s a difference between finding something attractive and defining an orientation by it.
“Having sapiosexuality as an orientation was a choice to improve the user experience, not a lofty declaration of what we recognize as ‘official’ orientations,” says Bernadette Libonate, director of brand partnerships for dating website and app, OkCupid, which since 2014 has allowed users to add sapiosexual to other orientations such as gay, straight, pansexual, heteroflexible and others.
Research shows it takes about seven seconds to size someone up as a potential partner, says Toronto therapist and relationship expert Kimberly Moffit. That doesn’t leave much time to move beyond appearances, which is why using “sapiosexual” could just be a way to filter out unlikely candidates.
Adam Shalaby included sapiosexuality on his OkCupid profile alongside his age, 39, and his hobbies: making his own sourdough, attending art openings, taking photos with a fisheye lens and conceptual Halloween costumes.
Shalaby, a teacher in Toronto, says his intention is to let potential matches know “I’m interested in someone who takes an interest in learning and understanding ideas, exploring ideas, exploring different types of thought.”