The answer I am going to give you starts with the idea that we live in a patriarchy, where men are programmed with a subconscious bias about women. If you can't entertain that idea then you will disagree with everything I say afterwards, but just hear me out for the sake of argument.
This unconscious bias is mostly invisible to men, but very visible to women. Women realize acutely that they are being treated differently in social interactions or in portrayals in fiction. They have to experience it every single day so it becomes really obvious.
Now some examples of "Bad Writing" could be creating a Mary Sue, or having too much exposition. Neither of these have anything to do with gender.
"Bad Male Writing" would be a phenomenon that comes about as a result of subconscious bias that a man learns from growing up in a patriarchical society. Some examples of "Bad Male Writing" would be not characterizing women enough, spending a lot of time on their appearances, etc.
It sounds like what tipped OP off to the author being male was the irrationality of one of the female characters. To steal from another comment in this thread:
> I am blaming the author for producing a work that is just shallow in a gendered feeling way. Were the author a woman, they might have realized that women don't just do things randomly but instead, drawing on her past experience being a woman, that they usually have a backstory where these things originate from.
> How does gender add anything here?
It adds something to the analysis because men and women have different experiences and that informs their worldview.
The whole internet meme of men thinking about the roman empire is relevant here.
When men think about the Roman empire they think about the conquest, the logistics, the infrastructure, the engineering, the military tactics, etc.
When women think about the Roman empire they usually think about how horrible it must have been to live under it as a woman. Men (mostly) don't consider the difficulty of menstruation in a city without a sewer system. Or the danger of childbirth in a world without germ theory and basic hygiene.
There is an entire dimension to the roman empire that the male fantasy overlooks.
These aren't insane or radical concepts, most of this is "pop culture" feminism I have learned literally just by talking to women.
This unconscious bias is mostly invisible to men, but very visible to women. Women realize acutely that they are being treated differently in social interactions or in portrayals in fiction. They have to experience it every single day so it becomes really obvious.
Now some examples of "Bad Writing" could be creating a Mary Sue, or having too much exposition. Neither of these have anything to do with gender.
"Bad Male Writing" would be a phenomenon that comes about as a result of subconscious bias that a man learns from growing up in a patriarchical society. Some examples of "Bad Male Writing" would be not characterizing women enough, spending a lot of time on their appearances, etc.
It sounds like what tipped OP off to the author being male was the irrationality of one of the female characters. To steal from another comment in this thread:
> I am blaming the author for producing a work that is just shallow in a gendered feeling way. Were the author a woman, they might have realized that women don't just do things randomly but instead, drawing on her past experience being a woman, that they usually have a backstory where these things originate from.
> How does gender add anything here?
It adds something to the analysis because men and women have different experiences and that informs their worldview.
The whole internet meme of men thinking about the roman empire is relevant here.
When men think about the Roman empire they think about the conquest, the logistics, the infrastructure, the engineering, the military tactics, etc.
When women think about the Roman empire they usually think about how horrible it must have been to live under it as a woman. Men (mostly) don't consider the difficulty of menstruation in a city without a sewer system. Or the danger of childbirth in a world without germ theory and basic hygiene.
There is an entire dimension to the roman empire that the male fantasy overlooks.
These aren't insane or radical concepts, most of this is "pop culture" feminism I have learned literally just by talking to women.