Because, culturally, we tend to assume the MALE experience is a universal experience, and women are the odd ones out. Check out the following. If anyone's interested, I have the book The Mismeasurement of Women and would be happy to loan it to you. Here's a quotation from Judith Fetterley, a well-known scholar and critic. It's heavily academic in style, but reread it a couple of times, paraphrase it, and spend a few minutes thinking about what she's saying. .
Power is the issue in the politics of literature, as it is in the politics of anything else.
Thus, by definition, women will never be able to write well. Finally, please read the following web-site, that fully and concisely expresses my attitude towards the course, its content, and you, the students. When you've finished with that, post it to our list-serve, and respond to a posting of one of your classmate's.