You have to be a 'genius' to join this
dating site
Dating site
for Mensa
members
- smart or snooty?
MEETING OF MINDS: An
Asian Mensa gathering in Singapore last year. PHOTO: MENSA
SINGAPORE
Report by CHARLENE CHUA
Is smart the new sexy or is it elitism at its
finest?
In other words, do smart people want to only date other smart
people?
In the US, they can, if Mensa Match has its
way.
Launched last month, the dating website has been
deemed controversially niche.
The partnership between high-IQ society Mensa and
online dating giant Match.com has been criticised as elitist
and discriminatory.
Mensa Singapore, which has around 1,000 members,
organises social activities at least four times a month for its
members to network and socialise.
It is not quite Mensa Match, but its events have
nonetheless resulted in relationships forming between people with
high IQs.
Mensa Singapore president Patrick Khoo told The New
Paper: "During our activities, people meet mentors, business
partners and there are couples who meet and marry.
"But just because someone. is not a Mensa member,
it doesn't mean that he or she isn't smart."
Mensa Singapore member Muhammad Subhi Ajiman, 25,
favours the idea behind Mensa Match.
The airlines contracts executive told TNP: "Since I
joined Mensa last November, there have been a lot of opportunities
to meet other Mensa members.
"Such activities definitely help to widen your
social circle and to meet likeminded individuals, depending on what
you are interested in."
Mr Subhi said that the activities are
wide-ranging.
"This definitely helps those who are slightly shy,
and the common interest acts as a platform to bond and find out
more about each other.
"Of course, these Mensa events aren't usually aimed
at finding The One, but you will easily meet and make new friends,
and who knows what will happen if you find someone you have
chemistry with?"
Mr Subhi said that he knows a happily married
couple in Mensa. "They come to events together and their chemistry
brings a fun vibe to the event."
Fellow Mensan Jayne Tan, who is in her late 40s and
took the admission test in 1989, said she knows of singles who met
at Mensa Singapore and started dating.
But the housewife, whose husband and son are in
Mensa, said: "I think what a couple needs most is chemistry."
Some Singaporeans who are not in Mensa were divided
on the issue, but most like the idea of one's IQ being
"transparent".
Creative director Jillian Lim, 35, whose partner is
a local Mensan, felt that there is a link between a person's IQ and
how he or she handles relationships.
DATED 'STUPID PEOPLE'
She said: "I've dated a lot of stupid people in the
past and I hated that. I couldn't connect with them and most of the
time they couldn't understand how I was feeling about stuff.
"My current partner is smart and funny and we can
talk about a lot of things.
"Mensans are good at solving picture puzzles. So
perhaps that equates to figuring out what makes me tick. People are
the most complicated puzzles."
Miss Wendy Chew, a 38-year-old sales executive who
is single, liked the idea of knowing a person's IQ before she
considered dating them.
Miss Chew likened it to putting a picture on a
dating profile.
She said: "No one says anything when we put our
photographs up on a dating website because it's a given that you
want to know what your potential mate looks like.
"I would love to know how smart my potential mate
is and since that may take me months to find out through the dating
process, choosing to date a Mensan helps me not waste time in that
department."
Freelance graphics designer Gerald Lee, 33, who is
also single, felt that displaying a person's IQ on a dating website
is "selfish".
He has had a tough time finding love in Singapore
and felt that segregating the brainy from those who are less
well-endowed intellectually would be detrimental
in the long run.
He said: "If you let all these smart people date
only each other, then only they - and we're talking about 2 per
cent of the population here - will likely have the chance to
produce smarter kids.
"This isn't fair because the rest of us will stand
no chance at all."
Intelligence comes with benefits, say
supporters of website
In the US, supporters of Mensa Match have made no bones
about their opinion that love is more attractive when it comes in
an intelligent package.
Match.com's
chief scientific adviser, Dr Helen Fisher, said in a press pelease:
"Why do we want a smart partner?
"Because intelligence is correlated with many
benefits, including higher income, sense of humour, creativity,
social skills, coordination and problem solving.
"Money can buy a sexy evening on the town.
"People everywhere gravitate to smart lovers
because an intelligent partner comes with a host of sexy
perks."
The dating service is open to Mensans in the US who
have scored at or above the 98th percentile on standardised
intelligence tests.
There are more than 110,000 Mensa members globally
with around 56,000 in the US.
In Singapore, close to 1,000 people are members of
Mensa Singapore. (See report below.)
HIGH
STANDARDS
Dr Ali Binazir, author of The Tao Of Dating and the 2009 article
Why The Smartest People Have The Toughest Time Dating, told CNN
that in general, people with higher IQs tend to feel entitled to
love and therefore hold extremely high standards when looking for a
partner.
As a result, a person with Mensa-level intelligence
can often feel alienated when looking for love.
The solution?
ABC News quoted American Mensa marketing manager
Victoria Liguez as saying of Mensa Match: "You're looking for
someone in the same tribe as you.
"You're asking, 'Do you value intelligence as much
as I do?"'
Mensa Match has also received criticism online from
those who do not appreciate its connotations.
Wrote Ms Molly Mulshine on betabeat.com: "The pairing consists of a
few initiatives.
"For regular Match.com members, a new Mensa 'badge'
will be available in case they want to 'express their interest in
the High IQ organisation', a release says.
"Sounds like a relatively tactfuJ way to express
their interest in a mate with a high-paying job, but whatever.
"Those plebes can also humiliate themselves by
taking the Mensa practice test... (to qualify for the dating
service)."
You can only try for Mensa only
twice
How does one become a Mensa member here?
Every two months, Mensa Singapore holds its admission test for
$60.
A person can try out for Mensa only twice and
should a second attempt be needed, it has to be done a year after
the first.
In the 40-minute standardised, culture-free,
intelligence test, only symbols or pictorial representations are
used in the 36 questions.
To avoid confusion due to different numeriCal
scores from different tests, Mensa uses a percentile as a cut-off
for membership.
To qualify for Mensa Singapore, one must score
within the top 2 per cent of the general population.
YOUNGEST MEMBER
Mensa Singapore's normal membership fee is $60 a year and its
youngest member is around three years old while the oldest member
is
above 50.
Last September, Mensa members from South Korea.
Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong and China attended
the annual Asian Mensa. gathering in Singapore, with about 60 of
the 150 attendees being Singaporean.
Apart from these large gatherings, the society
organises four regular social events each month, ranging from
networking lunches to seminars to happy-hour sessions and
board-game events.
Its president, Mr Patrick Khoo, said with a laugh:
"There are couples where one is a member and the other isn't, so
the partner also takes the test and joins us.
"Some other halves are hesitant to take the test
(in case they don't qualify)."
News, The New Paper, Wednesday, July 30 2014, Pg 2-3