It's well documented that the behavior of geeky men discourages women who are interested in such hobbies and fields, so I'm not sure that it is entirely ridicul

It's well documented that the behavior of geeky men discourages women who are interested in such hobbies and fields, so I'm not sure that it is entirely ridiculous for some people to assume that is intentional. I at least try to never ascribe to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence. Geeks are not known for their social skills. Their reclusiveness and cliquishness limits their ability to learn social skills from their more skilled peers, instead trying to learn from each other, like the blind leading the blind. Combine that with hormones and even more limited experience dealing with women as people and you get them either trying to one-up each other in some of the sort of dick measuring contests they use as social dominance displays or using patronizing gestures to treat women as if they were children.