Could be they are just badly written characters, you become insecure while reading the women characters or you don’t like how fake a lot of the world is so you hate it in books and the men characters you read tend to be more “idgaf”.

I saw you like horror and gore so reading about the ugliness in humanity sounds like the reason you prefer men characters. The majority of women characters that I have found are heroes or victims and if they’re villains they’re usually just petty or not too evil. Note: I don’t read a lot of books on women villains so this is strictly my opinion.

But I’m sure there are plenty of books with lead women that are in your genre. I would recommend some but don’t read horror much besides gothic type (think Mexican Gothic, which is written by a woman with lead woman) and that probably doesn’t have enough gore for you.

Ruth Ware tends to reel me in just to disappoint me. Either the characters are so boring and woe is me or the story itself doesn’t end up captivating me as I thought it would.