How does a man tell women's stories so well?

This is the 2nd Grady Hendrix novel I've read this year and it's so heartbreaking and yet the old school horror elements make it so readable.  You don't realize that the nightmare you are actually trapped in is the horror of what it is like being a woman.  How we have been oppressed in the past and although we are no longer forced to go to maternity houses there are still so many ways we are still losing 

I discovered I had cousin a few years ago.  My uncle was the father in this case and even though we all accepted her into the family to this day he will not acknowledge that she exists. Despite DNA evidence.  Her mother was forced to go to a maternity house and give her up for adoption.  There are generations of hurt out there.  She was not the product of an affair or SA. Her mother was not over 18 but unmarried so still a sin.  And this is where the US would like to return.