If anything, Hillary received a bump because she is a woman—which is completely opposite from the narrative that the professors at NY University were trying to create when they recreated the debate with the genders switched. And in the end, even that boost she got simply for being a woman was not enough to put her over the top. Most voters still voted on issues, not gender.
One other little thing that is sometimes mentioned is that Hillary all-but neglected states that were supposedly slam-dunks for Democrats. I think the wrong interpretation is given to that fact. I think that she purposely avoided those states because she knew that to campaign there would actually decrease her support. She was that nasty and vile a candidate.
In the end, the better man won. And it wasn’t because he is a man.
Without using the words, you accurately identified Hitlery the venomous harridan’s character as being her problem - she is a venomous harridan, and she lost for that reason!
The one explanation doesn't exclude the other. If her team actually thought they were losing those states they would have been in a real panic going into the election, and they weren't. So they had to have had some (over-)confidence that they'd win there.
That doesn't exclude the possibility that they might have thought that campaigning in those states might actually bring her numbers down, but when somebody's overconfident they don't generally think that way. I think they just assumed they'd win there, and the chance of winning in other states that they didn't expect to carry (Arizona, North Carolina) dazzled and confused them so they forgot about Michigan and Wisconsin.