.evepeyser reports on the strange but affirming experience that is Mensa’s Annual Gathering, where she learned that being “smart” and doing well on tests have virtually nothing to do with each other
Illustration: Stefanie Augustine In the designated game room at the Nugget Casino Resort in Sparks, Nevada, which was open 24 hours a day during this year’s Mensa Annual Gathering, I sat at a table with a woman named Kimberly Bakke, a 30-year-old purple-haired pastry chef and teacher from Las Vegas. Bakke is basically Mensa royalty.
You might have some preconceived notions about Mensa. Maybe you think it’s full of super-geniuses and/or hopeless nerds and/or elitists who haven’t earned that status. Perhaps you were put off by the group after listening to comedian Jamie Loftus’s podcast about her year as a Mensa member, in which she delved into the organization’s right-wing undercurrent and the online harassment she faced while writing about it.
Despite its history and Loftus’s conclusions, I did not get the sense that Mensa is an unhealthy place to find community. Many of its members think of themselves as outsiders and feel like Mensa is a place where they can be themselves and connect with people who understand and appreciate them. It’s a place where they can find other folks who love to play Set or who have encyclopedic knowledge of minute Disney trivia.
French psychologist Alfred Binet invented the IQ test in 1904 to identify which children were struggling in school so they could receive extra tutoring. As oncologist and writer Siddhartha Mukherjee explained in an episode of Radiolab, Binet didn’t want IQ to be the defining measure of anyone’s existence, labeling that practice “brutal pessimism.”
When I attended an event at which Mensa members debated “the pros and cons on both sides of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” I got a taste of the right-wing strain that Loftus chronicled on her podcast. The participants, all of whom looked to be over 50, spoke the same language of conspiracy and ignorance.
Five years later, Young was attending a motivational-speaking conference, and her assigned roommate happened to be a Mensan and recommended she join. She sent in the results from the test she took at the psychiatrist’s office and was admitted. “When I found out I was qualified, I cried for a whole day, because nobody ever told me I was gifted,” Young said. “It’s hilarious I found out that I would be qualified for Mensa because, after overcoming horrific adversity and trauma, I got a test.
“I think I might’ve been born poly like I was born libertarian,” an elderly woman who had cornrows and wore a t-shirt with the word NERDY said. “If anybody knows about Ayn Rand, she was poly.”
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