My Secret Garden
Encyclopedia
My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies is a 1973 book compiled by Nancy Friday
, who collected women's fantasies through letters and taped and personal interviews. After including a female sexual fantasy in a novel she submitted for publishing, her editor objected, and Friday shelved the novel. Later, after other women began writing and talking about sex publicly, Friday began thinking about writing a book about female sexual fantasies, first collecting fantasies from her friends, and then advertising in newspapers and magazines for more. She organized these narratives into "rooms", and each is identified by the woman's first name, except for the last chapter, "odd notes", which is presented as the "fleeting thoughts" of many anonymous women. The book revealed that women fantasize, just as men do, and that the content of the fantasies can be as transgressive
, or not, as men's. The book, the first published compilation of women's sexual fantasies, refuted many previously accepted notions of female sexuality
.
A sequel, Forbidden Flowers: More Women’s Sexual Fantasies, followed in 1975.
Chapter Two: Why Fantasies?
Chapter Three: What do women fantasize about?
Chapter Four: The source of women's fantasies
Chapter Five: Guilt and Fantasy
Chapter Six: Fantasy accepted
Chapter Seven: Odd notes
Nancy Friday
Nancy Colbert Friday is an author who has written on the topics of female sexuality and liberation.'Nancy Friday's successful fantasy revelations ' have seen her placed among 'the feminist erotic pioneers'...
, who collected women's fantasies through letters and taped and personal interviews. After including a female sexual fantasy in a novel she submitted for publishing, her editor objected, and Friday shelved the novel. Later, after other women began writing and talking about sex publicly, Friday began thinking about writing a book about female sexual fantasies, first collecting fantasies from her friends, and then advertising in newspapers and magazines for more. She organized these narratives into "rooms", and each is identified by the woman's first name, except for the last chapter, "odd notes", which is presented as the "fleeting thoughts" of many anonymous women. The book revealed that women fantasize, just as men do, and that the content of the fantasies can be as transgressive
Transgressional fiction
Transgressive fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways. Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressional...
, or not, as men's. The book, the first published compilation of women's sexual fantasies, refuted many previously accepted notions of female sexuality
Human female sexuality
Human female sexuality encompasses a broad range of behaviors and processes, including female sexual identity and sexual behavior, the physiological, psychological, social, cultural, political, and spiritual or religious aspects of sex...
.
A sequel, Forbidden Flowers: More Women’s Sexual Fantasies, followed in 1975.
Contents
Chapter One: The Power of FantasiesChapter Two: Why Fantasies?
- Frustration
- Insufficiency
- Sex enhancement
- Foreplay
- Approval
- Exploration
- Sexual initiative
- Insatiability
- Daydreams
- Masturbation
- The lesbians
Chapter Three: What do women fantasize about?
- Anonymity
- The audience
- Rape
- Pain and masochism
- Domination
- The sexuality of terror
- The thrill of the forbidden
- Transformation
- The earth mother
- Incest
- The zoo
- Black men
- Young boys
- The fetishists
- Other women
- Prostitution
Chapter Four: The source of women's fantasies
- Childhood
- Sounds
- Women do look
- Seeing and reading
- Random associations
Chapter Five: Guilt and Fantasy
- Women's Guilt
- Men's Anxiety
Chapter Six: Fantasy accepted
- Fantasies
- Fantasies that should be reality
- Acting out fantasies
- Sharing fantasies
Chapter Seven: Odd notes