我的秘密花园 (1973)

My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies is a 1973 book compiled by Nancy Friday, who collected women's fantasies through letters, tapes and personal interviews. After including a female sexual fantasy in a novel she submitted for publishing, her editor objected, and Friday shelved the novel. 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, challenged many previously accepted notions of female sexuality.

My Secret Garden sold at least 2 million copies and was translated to at least 10 languages. It was banned in Ireland.

A sequel, Forbidden Flowers: More Women’s Sexual Fantasies, followed in 1975.

Contents

Chapter One: The Power of Fantasies

Chapter 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

The play

In 2009, the book was adapted into a full-length stage play Multiple O: Women on Top. Playwright John Sable chose Women on Top (another book by Nancy Friday) as the play's title largely due to its more provocative connotation.