‘Smarty-pants’ jibe is a hate crime, claims psychologist

CALLING people a “nerd” and “geek” should be classed as a hate crime, an academic has said, after studying the impact of bullying on highiq individuals.

Dr Sonja Falck, a psychology lecturer and psychotherapist, said the “divisive and humiliating” terms are hate crime’s “last taboo”.

Dr Falck, who also runs a Harley Street psychotherapy practice warned that the harmful words should be categorised in the same way as homophobic, racial, and religious slurs are under UK hate speech legislation.

A specialist in individuals with very high IQ, Dr Falck has spent eight years researching discrimination against them, and interviewing high-ability adults about their own experiences.

During 20 hour-and-ahalf interviews (16 of which were with Mensa members), Dr Falck asked individuals questions such as how they had come to realise that they had a high IQ. She then conducted a contextual analysis of literature and other research to identify themes, one of which was the idea of belonging or not belonging.

“That was a really big one,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “That’s where being taunted with names like ‘nerd’ or ‘egghead’ or ‘brainiac’ comes in because the person is being set apart as being different to others and feeling like they’re a misfit and they don’t belong.”

Dr Falck added that all her interviewees had felt like this at some point.

Her research has now been published in her new book, Extreme Intelligence.

Speaking at the book launch, she said the next government must take legislative action to force societal change.

She said: “The n-word was common parlance in the UK until at least the 1960s.

“Other insulting slurs about age, disability, religion and gender identity remained in widespread use until [recently]. Society at the time turned a blind eye to their impact by passing them off as harmless banter.

“It is only with the benefit of hindsight and academic research that we realise how wrong we were.

“The same can be said about anti-iq words like ‘nerd’, ‘brainbox’, ‘geek’, ‘egg-head’, ‘dweeb’ and ‘smarty-pants’,” she added.

“Slurs such as these will continue to be used unabated until legislative action is taken.”