Tag: Love

Vocabulary

The Life of a “Sapiosexual”

Chris Chang-Bacon
dating

As you probably know, I’m all about new words, but dating sites are taking nomenclature to a whole new level. According to NPR, some dating sites now give the option to categorize yourself, not just as straight, gay, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise, but are also giving options such as sapiosexual–meaning “one who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature.”

This year has seen important progress made in terms of social media recognizing a wider spectrum of gender and sexual identity, such as Facebook adding over 50 gender options last year. However, are terms like sapiosexual–which basically describe “characteristics I’d prefer in a partner”–equally foundational to one’s sexual identity? Most of us (hopefully) would prefer to date a person we consider intelligent; I would also hope that person likes dogs and roller coasters, but I’m not sure I would list those as core components of human sexuality.


One commenter seemed to agree, at least when it comes to sapiosexuality, sardonically noting that:

“Sapiosexual implies that there is a single, simple, measurable form of intelligence that has some reasonable bearing on what a person is actually like… Sapiosexual means: I’m a smug, inflexible twit looking for someone else who will be impressed with me. For the sake of clarity, narcissist would do just as well.”

What do you think? Is designating oneself a sapiosexual or otherwise an important marker of sexual identity, or do terms like this trivialize the true spectrum of sexual diversity and gender identity?

In the meantime, if anyone is looking for a must-love-dogs-osexual, I have a friend for you ;).

 ~C.B.
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Language

Linguistic Dating Advice….

Chris Chang-Bacon

love wordThe little things really do matter.

All this time, you’ve probably been focusing on WHAT your date is saying, when apparently, you really should have been looking at HOW he/she says it. And not in terms of banal things like tone or looking longingly into your eyes, but the words themselves. Or more accurately, the words around the words.

That’s right, it turns out there’s a correlation between similar use of near-meaningless function phrases (such as the, that, I, and, this) and romantic interest. According to James Pennebaker, Psychology Professor at the University of Texas, Austin:

Continue reading “Linguistic Dating Advice….” →