What does it mean to be a member of Mensa?

Hehe, I totally want to join. Just for bragging rights. Apparently, I qualify. :D

I’m curious too what the culture of Mensa is about… I don’t really see the point other than hanging out with geniuses and having something to impress people with. :P

I’ve heard it described as simply self-congratulatory – An outlet for anti-social intellectuals to get away from the “normal” people for a while and tell each other how smart they are.

The thing is, there are many types of intelligence, not just one, and for the conventional type, IQ tests are really not the best measure.

(Fun fact – IQ tests are recalibrated every so often so that 100 becomes the average again.)

I joined as a joke. There is literally nothing to it. Call and schedule an appointment to take a supervised IQ test. They have a ton of locations, hopefully one near you (if you care at all, that is).
It’s totally a joke of a group.

But isn’t there a membership fee? Why pay for something if there is no benefit?

$60 a year. They offer different gatherings and networking opportunities and self-satisfying back-patting.

So, $60 a year to meet with “smart” people. Thanks, I’m smart enough to find those myself.

@theluckiest Are you still a member? If not, why did you quit?

Nono, I did it on a dare and I haven’t renewed, for exactly the reason you mentioned, plus most of the people in Mensa were thoroughly uninteresting and unimpressive.

It’s a social organization. Whether it’s useful or not depends on you. A lot of the local groups are full of people who are smart but seriously socially dysfunctional.

(I’ve seen this dynamic develop before. You take a group of people with a common interest. Once you get a noticeable number of dysfunctional people involved, they drive out the functional people, because the functional people have other options for socializing, but the dysfunctional people do not. And once you read that kind of a dynamic, you see functional people coming to the group, realizing the level of dysfunction, and leaving, while dysfunctional people come to the group and do not leave.)

At the same time, a lot of the national special interest groups are interesting, and a lot of them have magazines or newsletters.

There are other organizations that require even better performance on standardized tests, and they are more exclusive than Mensa. I’m sure that the level of dysfunction is high there too.

With 50,000 members in the US, and about that many more world wide, Mensa is more diverse than Fluther, but in many ways similar. There are a lot of people that are very pleasant to socialize with, and a lot who are not.

All through my school days, I was teased and ostricized for being a “teacher’s pet”. I never had any trouble with math, and I started reading when I was three years old. In Mensa, I discovered that no one looks down their nose at me if I don’t know who is playing in the latest sports event, yet many other people who are interested in them can find many fellow sports enthusiasts.

I am welcomed for my large vocabulary, and no one calls me a show off, the way some online have. I have never been to a Mensa meeting where people sit around and talk about how smart they are, or pat themselves on the back.

Most Mensa members will not even put their membership on their resume because of the prejudice of people in general, as you can see stated in the other answers here.

I was actually told on another Fluther forum that Mensan’s would be welcome here, but obviously, it is not true. I will stay, inspite of the inaccurate portrayal of one of my favorite things, because I do enjoy most of the users here.

I met my former husband, and my current husband in Mensa, and most of my friends are members.

Whatever makes you think it is not true? I would be willing to wager there are many Ms here who have simply not mentioned their affiliation to Mensa.

@Jeruba Is your question meant for me. I based my comment on the other very uncomplimentary and for the most part mistaken, things said about Mensa and it’s members on this question. Of course there are others here who do not mention their affiliation. Would you, if you knew you would be as soundly disrespected as many of these other fluthers have done?

@Yarnlady, I don’t think anyone on this thread has disrespected you. All of their comments precede yours.

If they do not have your experience of the organization, all they are going on is reputation and limited exposure. The press loves to beat up on groups like Mensa. But that doesn’t mean anyone is attacking you personally.

What would I do? I think I would be careful about declaring myself publicly with any controversial affiliation, regardless of its nature, if I didn’t want people’s responses to me to be colored by it. Suppose I had gone to a low-prestige college that everyone laughs at, or advocated biological experimentation with animals, or enjoyed sexual practices that some call deviant. Wouldn’t I be making a statement if I advertised that affiliation? And wouldn’t I be right to expect people’s view of it to influence their impression of me?

I think your reception here, and that of any other Mensans, is going to depend on the contribution you make and how you conduct yourself with respect to others and not on any other memberships you might hold. But if you bring them up, you are encouraging people to categorize you in a certain way.

As I read the original question, I see a respectful expression of genuine interest. If I were looking for a chance to speak well of Mensa, I’d consider that an invitation.

@Jeruba I didn’t take it personally, but most of the answers show a profound disrespect for Mensa, as I said. I expect people to get used to who I am, as I have been around the social networking for several years now. They will react to my approach depending on their own individual hang-ups, just as I will to theirs. For instance, I do not swear, and I do not respect those who do. That’s just me, and I don’t expect anyone to change because of it, but it colors my regard for their answers.

@Yarnlady – Thanks for the response. I always wondered about it. I would say that you have been welcome here by many people. I doubt that anyone’s impression of you would change if they found out you were, gasp, smart.

Believe me, saying I’m a Baha’i also opens me up to ridicule. But anyone who would ridicule my beliefs, or affiliations, without taking the time to understand them is not someone whose opinion I find valid. Fluther, despite being an open forum, is quite welcoming to anyone who can state their views clearly and treat other people with dignity.

If others have a different perspective on the organization based on their personal experience, it is just that.

@fireside Well put. I agree with your evaluation.

I’d just like to backpedal furiously and redeem myself!

I meant no disrespect for current or past Mensa members – I’d just like to question the motivations of the organization itself.

Mensa membership is qualified by an IQ test, which is an artificial measure of some sort problem-solving ability, but is dressed up as a test of all intelligence. Mensa promotes this view and builds artificial exclusivity based on it. To me, that seems wrong.

@bkudria When Mensa was first established, IQ tests were relatively new, and being used in public schools, the military, and several other real world applications. The criticism of the tests and the method has come out since then, but no reasonable alternative has been discovered. Mensa (the organization) does not promote any such view, but people who know nothing about it do.

My problem with Mensa is that I think it’s admissions process is flagrantly and unapologetically discriminatory. IQ tests don’t really say much, are incredibly variable, and afford some members a sense of superiority that they carry with them everywhere they go.
Certainly that doesn’t apply to everyone that participates.

@theluckiest You are mistaken about “flagrantly and unapologetically discriminatory”. The admissions office of Mensa is always striving to accomodate the applicant in the process. They contriubte financially to the development of a future process that can help identify the trait that they are trying to isolate. To that end, any potential member who can provide a satisfactory alternative is welcomed.

The only thing “discriminatory” about Mensa in the long run is that the club is a private organization for people who are as similar in interest as the tests that available today can provide.

It is absolutely no more discriminatory than the tests the NFL or the NBA, or the MLB uses.

I thought once you passed and were “in” you could always say you were a member? I know my grandmother is…I don’t know much about it.

@casheroo Once a person has joined Mensa and paid a membership fee, they can say they are a member of Mensa. If they no longer pay a membership fee, they are no longer a member, but still can say they were once a member. Just getting a qualifying score on an IQ test does not automatically make one a Mensan.

I have been a dues paying member continuously for over 35 years.

@Yarnlady Thank you for clearing that up for me!

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of Mensa. I don’t think I’d qualify, but I do understand the desire to be around other intelligent people. I was a gifted student, in an environment that did nothing to foster that. I stood out like a sore thumb all the way through school, and even as an adult my friends tease me about my vocabulary, and say I read too much. Part of what I love about Fluther is that intelligence is valued here. When I stumbled upon this site, I felt as if I had finally found ‘my people’. I imagine that Mensa would be similar.

Watching two of my children grow up attending a magnet school for gifted children, the differences between their experiences and my own childhood are striking. Attending school with other gifted children has fostered a level of comfort with their academic abilities that I never had. They were not teased on a daily basis for their intelligence, they loved the challenge, and were excited by the act of learning. They have thrived in that environment. They enjoy their brains. It’s nice to have a place where other people enjoy them, too.

PS: @Yarnlady There are more Mensans here than you’d imagine. ;)

@augustlan Yes, I have been made aware, however, as you can see, most do not admit it, because of the negative reactions of other flutherin.

@Yarnlady I don’t think it’s necessarily due to the reactions on Fluther, per se, but the reactions of some people – both here and in ‘real life’.

@augustlan Yes, that’s probably it.

I agree, @augustlan. I think that most people come here as individuals and participate as individuals. Membership in another group or site is not relevant. The general intrelligence level on this site is very high, so I think that’s a sound basis for saying members of Mensa would be welcome as fultherites.

Just as a point of interest, in case anyone could possibly care, most of the early participants of Yahoo!Answers when it first started in 2006 were Mensa members and the first ones of us to reach the top level on that site were all members. The site deteriorated rapidly with the huge influx of the general public.

I wish I hadn’t misspelled ‘intelligence.’

@Yarnlady: I’ve met a lot of well-adjusted and socially functional Mensans, but I’ve also been to a Mensa meeting, aimed at recruiting new members, no less, where the main topic of conversation really boiled down to, “I have a 150 IQ, and I can’t get laid.” Or, when a person of the appropriate gender joined the conversation, “I have a 150 IQ, wanna @#$%?”—and I exaggerate the level of crudeness, but not by much.

(That meeting, more than anything else, is the reason I’m not a member of Mensa.)

@cwilbur Wow, if I had let my first day at Fluther be my guide, I wouldn’t be here, either. In fact every day I have been on here I have seen material and subjects that I find objectionable, but I don’t judge the entire group by that. Each Mensa group is made up entirely by volunteers and the “tone” of the group is set by the members in attendance. To condemn an entire group based on one bad experience doesn’t make sense to me.

@Yarnlady – I’m still half asleep and you make me laugh. I’d agree that first impressions aren’t always the best ones to form lasting opinions around.

@Yarnlady: I’m not condemning the entire group, just offering an observation about the social dynamics that I observed and that (I have since found out) was not limited to that group. I am sure that there are patterns of behavior that, had you encountered them in your first day on Fluther, would have told you that this was not the place for you.

The tone of the group is, indeed, set by the members in attendance. If you go to a meeting and find out that the members in attendance really have nothing to talk about except how smart they are, why go back? And why join an organization that might have wonderful chapters elsewhere, but has nothing for you locally?

@cwilbur It’s definitely not for everyone. We once had a roommate who joined, and then lapsed, because he found nothing of interest in the club, even though he lived in a Mensa member household. His ‘thing’ was computers and SCA.

@Yarnlady – SCA?

@fireside Society For Creative Anachronism; a pre-17th century historical re-creation society

@Yarnlady – i was hoping it was that one, since there are some other oddities on that list.

@Yarnlady: and I’ve seen the dynamic in some SCA groups, too, for that matter.

Ironically, the local SCA group where I used to live was seriously dysfunctional—I used to hang out with several SCAdians who had disassociated themselves from it, and had written to Milpitas to complain, but the Mensa groups, I found out afterwards, were thriving and functional; after I moved, I found an area where Mensa was dysfunctional and the SCA was thriving.

(And I looked for the Mensa group because I had just moved, and was looking for new local friends, and figured that, based on its reputation, Mensa would be the sort of organization where I’d find amiable intelligent people. Go figure.)

@cwilbur—Yes, there can be just as much strife in SCA. You will find it in any group of ‘alpha’ type people. I used to be involved in “official” capacities in both groups, plus a philosophical society, and a volunteer cordinator for a youth group and I saw a lot of that in all of them, both at local and national level.

You can find it anywhere. Consider the PTA. You can find it (in astonishing proportions) in a Zen meditation group. When the Rosicrucians were fighting among themselves a while back, it made the local papers.

Wherever you have a group of more than two people, you will have politics, because politics are about who decides how the resources are to be used.

There’s also the truism that any group tends to be dominated by its most neurotic member. I won’t offer that as a demonstrable fact of life, just as a testable hypothesis. I have seen it work even in a group as small as six. (Note, “dominated,” not necessarily “led.”)

@Yarnlady One might also argue that “any group of more than one person” sees conflict.

Conflict, yes. But I think politics also involves choosing up sides, and that doesn’t happen until you have three. (This is not necessarily the textbook definition of politics.)

Well, I’m a member of Mensa and I joined to try to smart and geeky people in my area. I live in a large city and there are tons and tons of opportunities to socialize. Some of us come off as weird because we aren’t thinking of or good at conversing about typical topics. As a bonus, they offer some great discounts as part of membership. The people see down to earth and nice.

I am in Mensa simply because I can be in Mensa. I first heard about it in high school, but never did anything with the knowledge. When my husband
was told that he seemed to
qualify we went to a party given by a local group. When we went, I wanted to see if I was eligible. I was, based on some tests I took in elementary school, so I joined. The two meetings we went to seemed to be mainly people playing cards. Other than my IQ I didn’t have much in common with the other people. For me, it is just to say that I could join. Simply that. Bragging rights, not that I ever use them! :0)