Laying Bare my Own Conceptions

Since everyone knows that by engaging in sex you are bringing horrible dangers upon yourself, I would just like to start this post with the caveat that I realize by discussing issues of sex I am treading into the danger zone. Or, at least engaging in dangerous discourse, through which I may die.

Now to the post.

Fiction and the Ladies

SO WHAT is the deal with women fictionists? And by deal, I mean where are they?

Ok, I'm not stupid. I know that there are many women authors who write fiction. What I mean to say is that it seems that there are few female authors that I know of who write experimental, creative, or surrealistic prose. That is, the sort of literature I am most interested in. Female straight-forward novelists, there are plenty. Female journalists, poets, academics: yes, yes, and yes. I even remember hearing somewhere that the editor/book production field is skewed towards the female, in terms of gender of the professionals engaged in the industry. And they obviously do their work well, or they would not be doing it.

But of the more esoteric "literary" variety of prose, I see it being dominated by men. I'm thinking of: Palahniuk, Dick, Grass, Pynchon, Rushdie, and more. Am I wrong? Have I been missing some incredible women writers just because I am not looking in the right places, or because I just don't know what I'm talking about?

It has nothing to do with ability. I know a lot of creative women, who I think with some practice could really write well, but they are all interested in other media or different pursuits. I'm trying to gather together good writers that I know, both personally, and more well-known authors (after all, who am I?), and almost exclusively they are male.

I wonder if it takes a special sort of jerk to think that s/he can flaunt literary and/or societal conventions to write really creatively. These jerks being more often than not men? Or maybe, I only like writers that are jerks, or men, and so I am biased. Or maybe I am just a jerk.

Please, let me be wrong. Women should write; they should write crazy, off-the-wall shit. Why don't they? Or if they do, where are they? Help me, point it out to me, guide me out of the cloud of my ignorance.