But if one did happen to show an interest in "boys games" they would be bullied unmercifully. Just because you didn't see it happen didn't make it not happen.
But not by geeks. They would have been bullied by other girls, and by their boyfriends, and by the sort of people whose respect and affection they valued. Us nerds (at least those I know) would have been thrilled, but then we were bullied pretty mercilessly as well. We had a couple of cheerleaders come by and try to figure out what we were doing, which in and of itself was something, but it was really darn clear that while some of them were mildly interested, none of them would have risked the loss of social status that came from hanging out with us or taking up a 'nerd hobby'.
There may be some examples of gate keeping activities by gamers, but in my experience they are much rarer (particularly in the period) than gate keeping activities by people outside of the community mocking anyone that wanted to be in it. And, while nothing excuses being a jerk, let's do keep in mind that its highly likely that any nerd gatekeeper is consciously or unconsciously responding to their own abuse, taking a sort of vengeance on the poor innocent person is before them since they can't take vengeance on the person that actually wronged them. Again, not excusing this all too human behavior, because it's sad and jerky and the cause of so much wrong in the world, but just point out that in 1987 being a nerd was a highly oppressed social group in a lot of places.
Heck, as recently as a few years ago I had an out gay gamer tell me that he was 'in the closet' about his gaming because he was afraid of the bullying that would result if people knew he gamed. It sure as heck wasn't gamers he was afraid of being mocked by.
That said, by the early 90's (just 4-5 years after this poll) we seemed to have turned a corner at least in the community I was in at the time. There were a lot more girls willing to own their nerdiness, and mixed gender groups though they weren't yet the norm were not unusual. White Wolf games brought a ton of women into the RPG scene, ironically because IMO they amped up the sexual aspect of the game, making the idea of being a gamer and also being attractive, desirable, and popular something that didn't seem so ridiculous as it did in 1987. I told this story before, but I realized we were in a new frontier when I was in college, and I went to the games shelf in a book store, only to find two high school girls sitting on the floor with WW's 'LA By Night' on the floor between them, flipping through the pages and discussing which of the NPC's in the book was the dreamiest.
Far from normally being gatekeepers keeping the 'icky women' out as has become the stereotype, I bet a lot of women got into gaming because they had a loved one of some sort - brother, father, cousin, romantic partner, romantic partner of a friend - who encouraged them to game. Are there socially dysfunction men in gaming? Sure, stereotypes of nerds being socially dysfunctional often as with many stereotypes have some basis in fact. But I think it's a very biased picture of the history of gaming.
