Wilful Women -- Nancy Friday

"You've got to remember that nobody thought women had sexual fantasies, back in the early '70s, when I wrote My Secret Garden. Everybody I went to, in the professional world—whether they were sex therapists or psychiatrists or psychologists—everybody I interviewed said, "Oh, no, no, no. Women do not have sexual fantasies." And I, of course, looked at them blankly because I had them." Nancy Friday

A lovely conversation I had a couple of days ago with a dear friend got me thinking about where some of the more positive influences in my own sexual development have come from. Nancy Friday and her wonderful body of work have played a huge role. All I can say is thank goodness that Nancy Friday was wilful enough in the face of plenty of pressure to pursue her work in this field and write her books.

Nancy Friday's Women On Top, Men in Love, My Secret Garden are all sensational compilations and explorations of sexual fantasy and the role that fantasy plays in our lives. Those books had me breathing heavy and still do. Okay, I confess I nearly masturbated myself to death when I first got hold of a copy of Men In Love about twenty years ago. I remember thinking how amazing it was to be reading about men's and women's sexual fantasies so richly described and frankly written. Many of those fantasies went on to fuel many of my own.

I did eventually get around to reading the sensational text in between the fantasies. These wonderful books not only aroused and educated me but also served to make me believe that my own weird and detailed little fantasy life was not only okay but that there were people out there with even wilder and more awe inspiring fascinations and desires than mine. I recently re-read Women On Top, it was first published in 1991 and is as relevant today as it was then and just as hot.

"It is the mind that carries the genesis of sexual life, inhibits us from orgasm or releases us. Masturbation gets its fire, its life from what is sparked in the mind. The fingers might move across the clitoris indefinitely without orgasm; only when the mind structures the correct image, a scenario meaningful and powerful to us alone because it carries us up and past all fears of reprisal and into that forbidden, interior world that is our own psyche - only then do we come."
From Women On Top

I'd love to know if Nancy's books influenced anyone else as they did me?

More on Nancy Friday
More books -- The Joy Of Sex