[munchbunny]

Combine this with people who have varying thresholds for "understanding the content" and you have a context where it's quite possible that somebody who is actually quite competent doesn't feel that way because their threshold for "I get it" involves asking lots of seemingly obvious but not actually obvious questions.

When you put this kind of person in a climate where they feel like they are representing a group in front of others, then you have a recipe for somebody who has a lot of promise, but the environment suppresses learning. That's bad.

On the matter of whether this person feels like they are representing a group, it's important to distinguish whether this person "should" or "actually does" feel that they are representing a group. Women should not feel that they are, but we know that some do as a direct result of someone else generalizing them to represent women as a group. We know it happens. Maybe not by the people reading this comment, but we know it happens.

So this all combines into a situation where somebody saying "hey, asking questions is a good thing, stop worrying about making yourself look dumb" is necessary and helpful.