I haven't read that, and it sounds interesting and worth exploring, but there are definitely genres primarily written by men for men (or perceived as such) that get mocked, and whose readers are scorned. Science fiction, graphic novels and comics, westerns, spy thrillers… perhaps not as much as full-on Mills and Boon style romance novellas, that's true, but when I go in my local charity shop and look at the two bookcases full of popular fiction, one all muted covers and full of Andy McNab (or whoever's popular now) and the other more brightly coloured and full of Marian Keyes, the presentation looks pretty much equivalent to me in terms of apparent "literary value". (Though I do roll my eyes a bit at the weird gendered segregation in the first place.)
Yeah, there are "literary" books about torture, murder, and child abuse, and I've read some excellent ones, but there are also excellent literary books about romance, love and sex. And trashy entertainment books about both. The main readers and many of the writers of gruesome crime novels are women, too.
I'd have to read the book you mention for myself, if I wanted to evaluate the strength of the arguments that equally un-literary popular writing is considered automatically more prestigious if it's in a perceived "by men, for men" genre, but I certainly don't think it's so obviously true that it doesn't need a good argument.
The other factor is that women read a LOT more fiction than men do. This Yougov survey https://yougov.co.uk/entertainment/articles/28243-world-book-day-britons-reading-habits] from 2020 says:
27% of women read daily, compared to a 13% of men
22% of men say they never read, but only 12% of women say they never read
(And this is despite the fact that men tend to have more leisure time, on average, than women…)
42% of women prefer fiction, but only 29% of men prefer fiction
24% of men prefer non-fiction, but only 16% of women prefer non-fiction
So it would make sense that if women just get through a lot more fiction than men do, they're likely to get through a lot of whatever genre they read, and there's more of a market for mass-produced, enjoyable but ultimately not particularly unique books. There simply aren't that many men getting through dozens of novels of their preferred genre every year, as one of their main forms of recreation or relaxation, in the way many women do, so perhaps there's never been the opportunity or market to allow for a similar phenomenon to M&B to arise for a primarily male readership. (Somebody's got to be buying all those train magazines, though… 
)
Anyway, even if men didn't have the ability to laugh at themselves, that doesn't mean women can't! Everyone here is, I think, ribbing the M&B style in an affectionate, good-humoured way (though some do also have serious and valid criticism about aspects like the romanticisation of rape in some of them), without belittling the readers — which, after all, we all must have been at some point (or still are), for there to be any fun in trying to ape the style. Ignoring male denigration for a minute, though of course it does exist (cf. the poster upthread who was accused of having read too many M&B, for a start), this kind of gentle, affectionate fun-poking is a part of this country's female humour culture, and I'd be sad to lose it.