A lot of my steam friends are girls, and I play TF2 with 'em all regularly. And I at least DISCUSS and reminisce about games with my female friends on a regular base. One of my best friends, a girl, is a bigger final fantasy nerd than I'll ever be. I had a nerd party 2 years ago and watched who would eventually become a very brief girlfriend beat 2 Zelda dungeons in about 2 hours...
I've always known quite a few gamers of the fairer sex. I've always been surprised by the internets claims that they're so rare. I will admit to something I found kinda interesting though:
Out of all the gamer friends I have offline, about half of them are girls.
Out of all the steam friends I don't know offline, about 1/5th of them are girls.
Maybe girls just don't admit their gender for fear of harassment/flirting? I've had a few friends do that, and my best friend has had 2 girlfriends that LIED about their gender at first. It seems pretty common nowadays...