These days mainstream media has embraced “geek culture,” mostly because it makes a boatload of money for TV and movie studios.But there’s still one TV and movie franchise that still tends to evoke the stereotype of the pedantic, socially adjusted nerd living in his mom’s basement: “Star Trek.” Sure, J.J. Abrams tried to make it cool in 2009, but let’s face it: If you have an opinion about whether or not Kirk or Picard is the better leader (it’s actually Sisko, fight me), then most non-Trekkies will still assume that you need to — in the infamous words of Will Shatner himself — “get a life.”

That stereotype doesn’t hold true, of course, and not just because many “Star Trek” fans are productive members of society (some are even scientists and astronauts themselves) — but because unlike the classic male nerd archetype that most people tend to picture in their heads, the quintessential “Star Trek” fan is a woman. Long before becoming part of a fandom was as easy as starting a Tumblr account, female Trekkies (or Trekkers, as some older fans of the series prefer) not only dominated the “Star Trek” fan community but helped to create that community in the first place.

“It redefined the classic nerd to be much more inclusive. There were more women involved,” Stuart C. Hellinger, one of the organizers of the first ever fan-led “Star Trek” conventions, told Revelist. “The entire show was diverse in many ways, including the people that worked on the show. You had women writers and women story editors, and that wasn’t as common back then. A lot of different areas were opened up because of Gene [Roddenberry]’s vision, and a lot of the fannish community took that to heart, which is a very, very good thing.”

The framework that these women and men and wonderful weirdos put into place not only extended the legacy of “Star Trek” into what it is today, but became the basis for many aspects of fandom that modern people take for granted.

