The problem with female hockey fans is nonexistent. There isn't really a problem at all. There isn't a problem until someone decides that they, as an individual, personally have a problem with female hockey fans.

And that's the real problem.

This isn't the article where I talk about how women can be just as hockey smart as men. This isn't the article where we watch a female superfan completely school some stuck-up dude with a puck collection. This isn't the article about the little girl who grows up watching hockey with her family every night.

This is the article about the "fangirls" and the "puckbunnies."

Or rather, this is the article about the people who create that kind of horrible, rocky, hateful type of environment.

Being a woman and being into hockey means being part of a community. It's a sphere, just as any other characteristic or hobby. It's the kind of thing where if you see someone else in the same sphere, you immediately have something to talk about, to bond over. And as women who like hockey, as the members of this community, it's up to us to maintain it and keep it as a positive space for everyone there.

But picture this: someone within your community, within your positive space, turns to you and decides that you don't belong there. You reasons for belonging are invalid. They're not enough.

You're not a real fan.

You're just a puckbunny.

You're not enough.

This is what creates a tumultuous, hostile environment for everyone. Not just for the ostracized person and not just for the one pointing fingers. In its simplest form, it's something that's supposed to be positive that just come right around and puts someone else down.

So that's basically what happens in our little corner of the big, bad hockey world. You've got some girls complaining about how their team -- the one they've loved through its worst! -- suddenly has a rush of new fans that only care about players and their looks.

And somehow this becomes a horrible issue that everyone starts to rally against because Hey! These new girls don't even care about the game! All they do is talk about how cute the players are and how much they want to marry one. These girls are lesser because they're into hockey for all the wrong reasons!

If this is what you're thinking then you are part of the problem.

Okay, I'm not here to yell at you. I want you to understand and take something away. So let's step back for a second and take apart this kind of thinking. Piece by piece.

The first, clearest thing to say here is that it's none of your business. Some girl out there suddenly decides your favorite player is cute and decides she's a fan. Great. Good for her. You might not agree with it but it doesn't affect you. And even if it somehow makes its way into your everyday life, it doesn't hurt you. It's absolutely harmless. Maybe it annoys you. But then that's on you to practice self-control and not be a douchebag because someone just happens to annoy you. You don't have to be friends. You don't have to talk to her. Ever. You can just keep your thoughts to yourself and move on.

But then that brings us to your thoughts. These are the kinds of thoughts that exacerbate the "puckbunny" stigma. These are the kinds of thoughts that create a culture where people don't take female fans seriously. And that includes the very girls that are pointing the fingers at other girls. After all, if girls can point fingers at other girls then why can't boys point fingers at girls, too?

How can anyone take female fans seriously if we can't even take each other seriously? If there isn't respect in our own community? If we put each other down instead of uplifting each other? If we don't support each other? Then how can we expect anyone outside of our community to respect us as a whole?

That leads us to the argument that we don't need guy fans to validate ourselves. Which is true. Who cares if HossaBeast8181 thinks you're just trying to "slut up" when you don't happen to know the goalie's save percentage from his peewee championship? HossaBeast8181 can go choke on a fat one.

If you're just a fan then yeah, that's an awesome way to think and live your life. More power to you! You go out there and show every dumb fanboy on twitter dot com that he's full of shit and I'll be right there alongside you.

But I am a female hockey fan that wants to establish a career in the cutthroat pro sports industry. I wish that I could just ignore the shit people say. I wish I could prevent it from meaning something, from affecting me. But I can't. Because the whole stigma of women being lesser fans will spill into our careers. It might not be a clear wall. I don't expect any future colleagues to come up to me and outright question my life's work. But microagressions are real. Personal biases are real. It's the underlying thought, humming in the back of my future colleague's head, that might make him choose a male coworker over me for a cooperative project. It's that little subconscious thought milling around my future boss's mind that might get my male coworker promoted while I'm stuck doing more grunt work. It's that thought, that idea, spread across the hockey world, the entire hockey culture, that makes people dismiss all the wonderful female beats, reporters, writers, and businesswomen in a male-dominated industry.

So yeah, fuck HockeyBeast8181, but at the end of the day, you're not made of stone. It gets to you. Guys can be shitty, which is why it's nice to have a community, a pillar of support in a community of fellow women. But when women are shitty too? Then you've got an ostracized individual that you helped to put down and demean and belittle. You were the bully, whether your meant to be or not.

Sure, maybe you're just a teenager talking about your feelings on the internet. We all do it. Really, I'm doing it right now. But you have to understand that your words mean more than you originally intended. The repercussions are larger than you. When you take all of these types of comments and look at them -- look at the total audience and total span -- you're looking at a perpetuation of a culture of putting down women in the community for the very thing you love.

Okay. Now that you see why this kind of thinking is wrong -- how it affects more people than you, how it creates more hatred than you bargained for -- I'm done lecturing. I'm not here to yell. I'm here to educate. So now I'd like to talk about how we can fix it.

So you see a girl and you decide that she only likes hockey because the players are hot and for some reason, that just really bothers you. You have to do something and say something, you really have to. There's no way you can ignore it and just let her be without it affecting you.

Fine. Then help her.

Help this girl understand the game. Teach her to love hockey in its rawest form. After all, no rational person will spend hundreds of dollars to watch a three-hour game from the nosebleeds, where all you can see is the little dots of your team. Not if they don't even like the game itself at all. There's potential in every hockey fan, no matter how they first fall in love with hockey. So if you have to take it upon yourself to do something? Then do something with love. Not with hate.

So let's come together and help each other maintain a positive community. Let's actually uplift each other and support each other. Because isn't that what we all want? We're here to love hockey. So let's love it together.