Why I believe in the importance of allowing queer folks - especially the members of the neurodivergent community - to fully reclaim the terms sapioromantic and sapiosexual as valid and valued romantic and sexual orientations; and stop spreading the damaging rumor that there's anything remotely ableist about identifying as such!
Because, for many neurodivergent folks on the aromantic/asexual spectrum, romantically and/or sexually connecting with other people - including the way we will typically express our interest towards "a special someone" - does not typically follow neurotypical courtship narratives.
Friendships and romances often occur through the sharing of special interests.
If a neurodivergent person starts excitedly infodumping on you, it often means that they trust you and feel emotionally close to you, and/or that they are attempting to develop an emotional bond with you.
I can't talk for all neurodivergent folks, but I know that a few of us are also highly drawn to people infodumping on us.
And not only has it been shown that we read emotional cues differently, but many of us are hypersensitive to micro-expressions.
In a way, it would seem that we pick up so many subtle cues simultaneously - without being able to prioritize the most important ones - that our system gets overloaded, and we're unable to interpret them accurately.
It's like when we're in a room full of noise and are unable to focus on a single conversation, but treat every bit of sensory input on the same level.
When people use their faces to express themselves, they bombard us with so many signals we can't make sense of them anymore at some point.
This is why I'm personally so heavily reliant on contextual cues when I communicate with others.
But when people animatedly speak about a special interest of theirs, for some reason, the context becomes so clear and obvious to me that "reading them" feels natural.
Their eyes tend to light up, their skin flushes, they become highly intense and focused on their inner world, they sometimes use their hands a lot, and it's difficult to explain, but there's something emotionally and occasionally (because I'm also demisexual, but not demiromantic) physically arousing about it under certain circumstances.
Instead of being overwhelming / confusing, their expressions finally make sense and I enjoy watching them.
Being infodumped on by someone that's really passionate or knowledgeable about what they love / are interested in, and that you happen to find aesthetically appealing (and in my case share a deep bond of emotional trust with), can be the greatest form of sexual foreplay you can ever experience!
A dear neurotypical friend of mine (with a gorgeous brain it has to be said!) once told me that she and I are similar in our preference of partners, so to speak, yet our sexual instincts work in reverse!
As an allosexual, she can be sexually attracted to someone at first sight. However, she's unable to sustain that primary sexual attraction, and to feel any desire to act upon it, unless she is able to intellectually connect with the other person and/or experience some fascination with the way their brain works.
If she can't achieve that intellectual connection/fascination, then her initial primary attraction gets "turned off", and she stops being attracted to them.
Whereas I - as a sapiosexual - am incapable of any sexual attraction towards anyone (regardless of how aesthetically attractive they might look to me) until I intellectually connect with the other person, and/or experience some kind of fascination with the way their brain works.
She's someone with an intellectual preference so strong that it can inhibit her primary sexual desires.
I'm someone that is incapable of primary sexual desires, until an intellectual connection successfully triggers a sense of secondary sexual desires.
She has a sexual preference for intelligence, while I'm sexually oriented by intelligence.
The way I perceive the other person's intellect is what will make me suddenly experience sexual attraction towards them when, until then, I was totally sexually uninterested in them.
And, most of the time, when you try to explain sapioromanticism and/or sapiosexuality to people, they will tell you "Yeah, but you have eyes! Surely you can tell if you find the person romantically and/or sexually attractive before going to talk to them!"
I've no idea if they are romantically and/or sexually attractive, or not, until I intellectually connect with them.
This is the part they typically struggle to understand, and why they are so convinced that sapiosexuality is but a mere preference, rather than what triggers / awakens the attraction.
And let me be clear: most sapioromantic and sapiosexual people I know do not equate "being intelligent" with having a high IQ, good grades at school, or being perceived as "smart" in society.
We tend to be drawn to the intelligence we perceive in other people in a very qualitative rather than quantitative manner, and often are more attracted to certain more specific forms of intelligence (ex: emotional intelligence, spacial intelligence, musical intelligence, mathematical intelligence, philosophical intelligence, etc.).
Personnally? I'm exclusively into fellow "geeks" (people that display what I subjectively refer to as a very "geeky" type of intellect).
And my romantic and sexual desires entirely depend on my brain's ability to "geek out" with someone else's brain! Otherwise, they could be the most wonderful and beautiful person in the world, and I would be unable to find them romantically or sexually appealing.
As a sapiosexual demisexual, I also need a deeper emotional bond (demi) for my sexual desires to essentially "unlock", on top of that intellectual connection.
And there are times where I'm sapiosexually and demisexually attracted to a best friend I've got absolutely zero romantic feelings for!
But as a sapioromantic, I can have crushes on people that I feel very intellectually connected to / fascinated by, without us sharing any deeper emotional bond at all, either!
I've often been known to have crushes for, and become romantically involved with, some people without ever having successfully managed to emotionally bond with / develop any sexual attraction towards them.
As for claims that "you can only pretend to being sapiosexual if the only thing you find sexually attractive about your partner is their brain"; it's totally ludicrous!
Do we tell heterosexual women that they can't be heterosexual if they are attracted to anything other than the gender of their partner(s)?
Them being heterosexual simply means that they aren't able to find people that aren't men (or of a different gender) sexually attractive.
My being sapiosexual means that I'm unable to find people that I haven't managed to intellectual connect with sexually attractive. It's really as simple as that.
Otherwise, I have my own preferences when it comes to what I also find attractive in a partner. Gender has never personally played any role in it; but you can also have bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, omnisexual, etc. sapiosexuals.
Sapioromanticism/sexuality, essentially, is to intellect what Demiromanticism/sexuality is to emotions.
And, while you do not need to be neurodivergent to be sapioromantic and/or sapiosexual, this is a type of greyromanticism/greysexuality that appears to be often found amongst neurodivergent folks, given our instinctive ease and predilection towards more intellectual connections (often less overwhelming / confusing) vs emotional ones.
And so, I'd also like to suggest using these flags, to symbolize sapioromantic/sapiosexual attraction, instead of the other weirdly colored green/brown/blue one (that has a very dubious origin, from what I've read), to highlight that connection.
Because it can also be very easily combined with the demiromantic and/or demisexual flags, for those of us that are both. Ex:
And then, if you wish to combine them with other identities...
Or, if I wanted to combine all of them under a single flag...
Had I been both demiromantic and demisexual (on top of sapioromantic and sapiosexual), it could have looked a little like this:
Are there also non-queer folks claiming that they are "sapioromantic/sexual" in an eliticist way, and/or to simply state a preference for certain types of intellect, because they are convinced that we can all be primarily attracted to people?
But that doesn't invalidate the fact that sapioromanticism/sexuality does exist as a form of a-spec romantic/sexual orientation.
Just like the fact that there are people stating that they wouldn't date, or have sex with, someone that they don't have deeper emotions for - despite being attracted to them - does not invalidate the existence of demiromanticism/demisexuality.
And I do genuinely see people spreading rumors that sapioromanticism/sexuality is inherently ableist as being an effort to invalidate the way neurodivergent folks experience their own romantic and sexual connections, and demonize us over our relationship struggles.
The ableism, as far as I'm concerned, is refusing to recognize that romantic and sexual desires born out of an intellectual connection (sapio) are as valid as romantic and sexual desires born out of an emotional bond (demi)!
