I can attest from personal experience that it's not only women to whom people will sometimes react very negatively. This is one of the factors which has conditioned me into being less comfortable attempting to politely disengage than continuing a conversation I don't want.
r/Fitness does a weekly "Moronic Monday", a judgment-free thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. I thought this seemed like a useful thing to have here - after all, the concepts discussed on LessWrong are probably at least a little harder to grasp than those of weightlifting. Plus, I have a few stupid questions of my own, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that other people might as well.