The Trials of the Geek Girl

Girls and women have always been into stereotypically geeky things. We've always been reading comics, playing video games, studying computers, all of it. Maybe not all of us, just as not all men are interested in football, but geeky women exist, and we have existed as long as these mediums have been there for people to enjoy.
Fun fact: women were the first computer programmers. Besides Ada Lovelace, who was the first computer programmer, the job of a "computer" in the 40s was largely a female profession: the job required mathematical calculations to be done by hand. When machines were invented to perform these calculations, the human computers took over the job of programming them. Back then, hardware was valued over software, so men in the industry left the "unimportant" job to women, but when the industry shifted to focus on software, women were ousted from the positions they'd already occupied for years. Ironically, the shift was a result of the invention of the COBOL programming language, invented by a woman: Grace Hopper.
That tangent aside, nowadays, if a woman, particularly a teenager, expresses interest in comics or games, she is rejected by many members of that community. Accusations of just liking these things for the attention, or not truly knowing the inner details of whatever thing she likes, whereas a male geek wouldn't have to justify his preferences. It's as though there's some sort of geek cred bar exam that only women have to pass.
I will never understand the sort of thought process that leads people to think that this is an okay way of behaving. First of all, if someone is trying to do something for attention, who cares? Accusing them of doing so is, in fact, giving them attention. That aside, what is the point of actively trying to keep people out of this space? Shouldn't you want to expand a community that focuses on this sort of media in order to foster discussion and to produce even  more media?
I do not at all think that people with this sort of mindset are a majority, but nonetheless, this sort of state of mind bothers me. I strongly believe that people should be able to enjoy whatever they want without fear of backlash from within the community in which they are participating, so attempting to oust someone because they aren't "really" interested is absolutely abhorrent to me.