Calling someone a 'nerd' or 'smarty-pants' is the last taboo and should be made a hate crime says psychotherapy lecturer

I don't agree with her call for censorship but she does have a point.  I was once a State Secretary of Mensa for some years so I am well aware of the issue. I have in fact personally experienced a certain degree of shunning due to people seeing me as different

But on the other hand, being bright should enable you to cope with most things without too much trouble.  I certainly had no grief about having a high IQ.  But I do know some others who have a strong wish to be "normal".  "You haven't got a hope", I tell them.  But they try.

And we tend to have the last laugh anyway.  We do very well in most of life's challenges.  We tend to get rich and we even live longer


Branding someone a 'nerd' or 'smarty-pants' should be made a hate crime, an academic has claimed.  

Psychology lecturer and psychotherapist Dr Sonja Falck says 'divisive and humiliating' anti-IQ insults can have negative effects that last a lifetime.

She wants people with the highest IQs in the country, who make up two per cent of the population, to be protected by the same hate crime laws as ethnic, religious and sexual minority groups.

The University of East London lecturer and Harley Street psychotherapist is also calling for the insults 'braniac', 'know-it-all', smart-a***', 'dweeb' and 'brain box' to be covered by hate crime legislation.   

Her views are based on eight years of research, which was spent speaking to dozens of high-ability children, parents, and adults about their own experiences.

She clams victims of anti-IQ slurs often experience the same level of distress and isolation as other minority groups at the receiving end of verbal abuse.

Extending legislation to include these words would, she claims, help stamp out the 'archaic' victimisation of more than one million Britons with a 'gifted' IQ score of 132 or over, she added.

Dr Falck has just launched a new book called 'Extreme Intelligence', a study of discrimination against those with especially high IQs.

Dr Falck is herself a member of high-IQ society Mensa, and has given presentations for the organisation as well as the US-based institution SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted).

John Stevenage, chief executive of Mensa, said: 'Very high-IQ individuals often experience isolation or bullying from people around them because they are perceived as being different from the majority.

'Mensa as an organisation gives people with very high IQ a community which is non-judgemental and inclusive of difference. Put simply, everybody is different, so no-one is.'

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