I read this as a late teen due to my curiosity in psychology... But...
Oh boy, nothing could've prepared me for the depths in which some womens fantasies go!
It is interesting in the respect of seeing how different minds imagine things, but it is certainly a shocker at times and It's also crazy to me to acknowledge the openness of these 70s women, how trivial it must've felt at the time.

Side note, this isn't a read for the faint of heart, as others have said before me!

I listened for about 1,5 hours while driving a car and it was nice to know that women have such in some way crazy fantasies. However - fantasies can be whatever we like. The book is way too long. I think reading 1 hour to get the main idea - that women can have various types of sex fantasies is enough after that it becomes boring.

Although this is an old book (1970's?) the themes and dreams of people are ultimately timeless and this book proves it. In it I found out things about women that are not meant to be judged or maybe not even understood, just accepted. In fact I'm confident that many of the women who shared these stories/fantasies have no idea why they get turned on by them but nevertheless do. That's the thing about guys- we often don't feel comfortable about things we don't understand. Well, at least for me, after I was about four stories in I had to turn off the need to understand and just accept and then almost like magic a new higher level of understanding was born. I was forced to put my ego down and learn what goes on in the mind of a woman that rarely comes out of her mouth. I'm hoping that with what I now know, I will be able to cultivate more trusting open relationships with women and implore any man who wishes the same to get this book.

I wasn't sure about this one but gave it a go. I don't know the meta of this book (like if it was meant to be feminist or not), so I'll just share my thoughts.

First, the bad:

There was too much moralizing or normalizing, instead of letting the reader (listener) decide on their own how normal they think these fantasies are. I mean don't try to convince people either way. Whoever picks this book is already tuned-in and curious. There is no need to defend anyone, it is what it is.

There was much filler in between the actual fantasies that could have easily been edited out. Just give us the fantasies one after the other please, no need to drag it out.

Only when it came to bestiality was I thown off, but each to their own. So yeah, there are few wtf ones.

The good:

We get a sneak peek into some women's fantasies, which were timeless. I couldn't really tell if this was a fresh or an old book, but apparently it's old. It's reassuring that there "was always sex, kinda like today" several decades ago. I believe most of the fantasies were adorable or cute and if these girls just came out with them to their spouses it would have been a good test, to see if they are worthy of continuing the relationship (by their men fulfilling the desires), or running away scared (apparently they would not be a good match after all, if the girl has to hide things). Same would be true when the genders were reversed. What was made apparent is that girls have less ways to live or act out their fantasies, because the lesser availability of male witches, or they just live their life in hiding afraid of being labeled or whatever. But it was eye opening that of course they are sexual creatures, more than guys would think. Pephaps the sample size of interviewees is not representative (most likely), but still it was an interesting read (listen).

- People have immense urge to irationalize and moralize primal fantasies - instead of taking it as it is, they must judge what is "right" or "wrong" - and if it's "wrong", they have immense urge to justify it based on the "unfairness of the society"

- Most of the fantasy involves involuntary, aggressive, and brutal sexual act. Often with a man that's significantly more powerful, containing more status, than the female counterpart (think Fifty Shades of Grey)

- Many of the other fantasy involves other women - even though the writer would keep repeating that she doesn't have any lesbian tendency and would never do so in real life

- Fantasies often involves public, thrills - of almost getting caught but acting not

Reviewed Feb. 18th, 2013

Like so many older books on sex that purport to have a sociological raison d'etre. In this case, the (at the time) ground-breaking discussion of women's fantasies but in actuality it's just a not-very-well written collection of extremely dirty stories that unless you neither fancy women nor are one, are probably going to get you hot, just as the author intended.

Read because I saw in the guardian she had died recently. Feels very dated and full of the uncomfortable isms that go with that. And by the nature of it, badly written. It only gets 3 stars because of the nostalgia factor, when at age 10 I lucked out and got to read women on top cover to cover while staying over at a friend of my parents' house one night. I'm sure a lot of these are genuine but I also suspect quite a few people responded to her ads by writing up the most transgressive things they could think of just to see if they would get printed.

Caitlin Moran mentioned this book in How to Be a Woman, and I was intrigued so went looking for it and found it's available as a free download from the Internet Archive. The fantasies are mostly fun - with a few disturbing exceptions where fantasy and reality overlap. These days its contents aren't all that shocking, but it must have been considered outrageous when it first came out in the 1970s.

This was interesting, not much different from most sexual pseudo-psychology books.

This is a pretty cool collection of women’s sexual fantasies. It hasn't been done before. Haven’t been repeated, although I wish it would.

The collection of fantasies are great, and nicely organized and contextualized. Some are arousing, some are weird and others just made me laugh. On the other hand, despite that Friday is a smart, brave lady with nice writing skills, her social and ethical commentary was not all very impressive. My issue with her commentary is that she's embedded in a system of thought that only takes “nurture” into consideration to explain human behavior, neglecting “nature”, and that sexual freedom is an ultimate good with no consequences.

The book was intended for women, but as a man, I found it valuable to read regardless. The book gives a nice overview of the range of women’s sexuality and made me more reflect on how much fantasy plays a role in sex. And although I may sound criticalof the book in general, but I do think the book does a lot of good things, bring up many sexual ideas to play with ... encourages partners to talk about fantasies, etc...

The book gave me the inspiration to write my own fantasies down. It’s interesting to note that sexual fantasies thrive in a dimly lit room of the psyche, lit by romantic candles.

When I wrote my fantasies down on my computer to be analyzed, they were transported from the dimly lit room into a squeaky clean lab with bright fluorescent light, sterilizing the erotic intensity, as they no longer come to me and take hold of me, at least for the time being. I suspect some of the power of fantasy comes from the ambiguity of how you feel about them.

From what I know of women’s actual sexuality (hardly anything), it seems to me that the selected fantasies are well-chosen. But I speculate that most of them occupy the outer-edges of fantasy, tilted toward the extreme, and do not seem to represent the general population. I suppose the hyper-sexual portrayal of women didn’t hurt Friday’s intention with the book, namely to encourage women to talk about their relatively mild fantasies.

At the end of the book, there was a Ph.D. guy defending Friday, and discarded this critique of “Not representative” with muddling any rhyme or reason behind intellectual babble. He attempts to invalidate the critique by saying “It’s impossible to get a representative sampling of any study of anything.” The problem with this defense, of course, is that this defense can be used for any study of anything.

This is not a critique by the way. From a man’s point of view, the palette of the extremes can paint an accurate picture of women’s overall sexuality. And might also compensate that a lot of people think of women as creatures of pure sunshine - farting fairy dust smelling flowers in their free time.

Friday insists that fantasy is harmless, and there’s nothing that can go wrong with it, regardless of its content. She argues: “If it results in a good fuck, then what’s the harm?” This depth of thinking is limited to the idea that sex is merely a physical act, where the whole point of sex is a physical pleasure and cumming.

The issue is that when you fantasize about someone else during sex (which, by the way, is advocated in the book), you’re reducing your partner to a masturbation toy. When both partners are doing this, sex is reduced to two pieces of meat rubbing against each other while their minds completely detached, off to their respective fantasy-land, pretending that something else is happening.

Freud and Jung would disagree with Friday that fantasy is harmless, because fantasy may increase neuroticism: Especially if the fantasy is outside the sphere of moral defensibility.

Repeating a fantasy over and over that cannot and should not be acted upon results in neuroticism. The fantasy will begin to take on a life on its own, conscious or unconscious. This will happen regardless of whether or not you admit to yourself that you want this to happen in reality. The fantasy can grow into an independent self-sustaining personality of a mind, and this will result in a growing unconscious inner conflict.

I believe this is true because I have found that repeating a thought that’s possible in reality has slowly tended to become reality. This is not necessarily “Law of attraction”, but just basic neurological reprogramming, plastic neurons firing together ‘n’ shit. Fantasy is not limited a source of joy and a better fuck, encapsulated and sealed tight from any real-life consequences, as Friday would say, but it has a deeper function, maybe one of the main drivers of human behavior.

On the other side, fantasy can have the opposite effect, an escape from reality, to stagnate real change. Martin Shepard suggests women continue their fantasies to compensate for any lack in reality, in fear that if they stopped, their real-life situation may become worse as they are robbed of their joy. To which I would respond: YES! And that’s exactly the point. Pain is extremely motivating. The more you have to endure the pain of confronting real life, the more likely you are to change the circumstances of your life to the degree you can.

The statement “The fantasy turns me on, but I never want it to happen in reality” is taken from a too simple approach to psychology. It does not take into account that the psyche is made out of many different wishes and personalities. And this part of you may shrink or grow depending on how you diverge your psychic energy.

There were some wild fantasies in the book. I think it’s good that these women admitted these to themselves and accepted them enough to use them for pleasure. Having said that, I doubt a repeated use of a degenerate fantasy gives the person joy in the long term and seems like a mere coping mechanism.

Friday includes a “success story” where there was a correspondence between a married woman and a psychologist. The psychologist suggests the woman to fantasize about a tennis star whom she has a crush on while having sex with her husband. “Don’t tell your husband,” the wise-moral sage of a psychologist said, because: “He will get mad.” The story is presented as a “success” because the fantasy resulted in greater sexual intensity on the following night.

I wish this was satire because this is comically bad advice. This is like suggesting adultery. Sure, the intensity may have been increased that night, and quite possibly the next night also. Problem is, orgasms are, unfortunately, not a good moral compass.

This advice is not beneficial long-term, for the marriage nor the sex life. Any action that you cannot own up to those you love, will eventually yield the situation where a lie has to be produced (verbal or otherwise), which disconnects you from the other, resulting in a less authentic relationship and less mutual trust. Lying and keeping secrets limits the emotional connection you can have with each other, reduces the natural spontaneity you allow, which in turn limits the quality of the sex.

If your conscience doesn’t bother you when you reduce a person who’s sharing their body with you to a masturbation toy, by pretending they are someone else, then that’s a sign of moral immaturity.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are stuck in bad marriages and use fantasy as a coping mechanism. Plenty of women in the book held back discussing their fantasies “to save the husband’s pride,” not realizing that adults are tougher than you think. I don’t know what’s worse, the lack of respect for their partner, or that it’s just a rationalization of the fact they’re the ones too afraid to be rejected. It’s much more flattering to think of oneself as a protector rather than a coward.

Fantasy can be a great source of pleasure and fun, it has a vital place in a healthy sexual relationship, but I don’t share Friday’s enthusiasm for embracing perversion and the short-sighted idea of sex. For the sexual liberation of women, the ideal should be to alleviate the unnecessary repression, and stop there, a radical acceptance of anything goes, sky’s-the-limit and an orgasm-driven hedonistic decadence is going way too far and will make women confused, not fulfilled. (Playing a grumpy old grandpa is a lot of fun you guys, I especially like the part where I get to smack naughty women with big words I just learned.)

I’m amused by the feminist joke that women should have to be promiscuous (sorry for the outdated language) in order to “understand themselves better.” Motherhood will teach you nothing, just compliance. They say: The true path of self-knowledge is found on the cock carousel.

Isn’t it strange how women who have had the time to understand themselves better, have a higher chance of divorce? Even if you take into account that religious women tend to have fewer sexual partners and how religious communities view divorce as more consequential, I would still have guessed that women who had the liberty to test all the types of men, would end up having a higher chance of a successful marriage.

I’m saddened by the fact that girls are encouraged to have sex early, and many girls feel disgusted after losing their virginity from casual sex, (and nausea from the hangover is a factor, too) but she’s encouraged to keep going as she’s promised that she will become numb to the disgust.

Enough hypocrisy on my part. Back to the fantasies.

The key themes in the fantasies I picked up on are: Spontaneous, uncontrolled, force, rape, virile strong men, unknown anonymous men, socially taboo, in public, secret, gangbang, being highly desired (hence the uncontrolled aspect), pain, orgies, love, man-on-man, being dominated, other women and animals (especially dogs) and people watching her during the action.

I was impressed by some fantasies that required flexible mental gymnastics to pull off. Scenes where the identities of the sexual actors were fluid and morphed into and out of different bodies, where the laws of physics were bent, time was warped and the galaxy melted into an orgiastic soup of sensation.

Some women had simpler fantasies - a scene of her standing naked on the beach was enough to get her off.

Some have sweet fantasies, literally, a slow-mo scene running to embrace her lover in a meadow full of flowers, puppies, unicorns, and love. But the vast majority of fantasies were in the opposite direction.

To Friday’s credit, I was surprised by the selection of fantasies, some that I would never imagine someone who considers themselves a feminist would publish. I can only imagine the backlash from the feministic community. Having said that, Friday's acceptance is somewhat superficial, namely, women’s desires have been manufactured by the patriarchy, and women ought to be re-educated to desire more empowering things. Because according to Friday, desire is something we’re taught, not something innate.

For me, this was the most interesting question that popped out of the book: Have Women’s, (and men’s for that matter) sexual desires been manufactured by society, or is it something innate? I think it’s a combination of both. The root desires cannot be changed, but how they manifest in fantasy is influenced by upbringing and society.

A common theme in the fantasies is to be dominated. Friday says that this particular generation of women have their sexuality undefined culturally, and so they default on submissiveness.

But why? It’s not obvious at all why that if you “leave women’s sexuality undefined” they will commonly fantasize about being dominated. Friday thinks this a bad thing and says it requires it will take a generation of educating women to take a more active role in sex and live up to their true sexual potential. In other words, she believes that women ought to be socially conditioned so that their sexual desires will be more empowering.

The implication of this is that: If Friday is wrong and instead, a person has an ingrained nature based on their gender, that would mean Friday does not accept women as they are.

The psyche compensates for unfulfilled desires. And so I would assume that domination/rape-fantasies among women in Western countries are more prevalent than with women in countries where real rape and domestic abuse are more prevalent. (I might be wrong - considering how one woman fantasized about her actual rape.) Whether or not that’s the case, the root desire of these compensations has to come from somewhere, and it is quite clear from my point of view that the basis of these desires is universal and biological.

Nathalie from the “Room 5” chapter says in the postscript of her letter that the more socially liberated and the more of a dominating position she takes on in her work, the more she fantasizes about spanking and bondage. Take this broader, and you will see how Fifty Shades of Grey is a bestseller in an age of feminism.

Friday thinks that women’s domination fantasies stem from shame from society, so when they are forced, they feel unburdened by this feeling. This may play a part in it, but I think there’s a myriad of more important reasons. #1), a dangerous and unexpected event produces adrenaline, pumps up the heart rate, which is closely connected with sexual arousal. #1.5) A sense of urgency helps orgasm come quicker #2) They cannot help but feel highly desired by a determined man, risking his freedom just to have her once. #3) It seems clear from a biological perspective that women who preferred dominant men would have a higher chance of survival. Our core desires are of nature and immutable, and women’s desire for domination is unsatisfied by today's political climate, which grows stronger in fantasy.

Friday claims that as a result of the ages of the patriarchy, sexuality has been owned and defined by men, but now it’s time for women to rise up and claim their sexuality back. I think this notion is fine, only if you neglect minor details like the entire history of mankind and their mythology, where it is the rule that the gods of sexuality were women.

She seems to be misinformed about how women’s sexuality is repressed in comparison to men’s. Men are far more restrictive than women about telling their fantasies and limit their sexual experience to the most necessary details. Men would love to talk about their sexual conquests, but are not taking any risks of turning each other on with the details. A straight man’s worst nightmare would be to share an erection with another. Friday notes that women do not have the same “locker room” talk as men do, but I doubt it’s any sexual oppression, rather, it probably has to do with the way women and men select sexual partners. I don’t see any billboard advertisements, education plans, or religious teachings promoting this strongly ingrained behavior. Because of its universality between different cultures, it’s reasonable to assume this is because of biological differences between the sexes.

My issue with feminists are with those who want to “educate” women rather than accept them and love them for what they are. They reject the natural being of women because they think the patriarchal culture has corrupted them, in other words, (if they happen to be wrong) they believe women of their natural state corrupt.

I get that I sound like the conservative using nature as an excuse to keep things the same, “look, it’s just good ‘ol mother nature, leave her be!” - and I might be wrong, as I am often, but what worries me about certain types of feminists is that they are more obsessed with ideology than they are of women’s well being.

Sexual repression has caused ungodly amounts of suffering, especially for women, which the sexual liberation movement has worked to alleviate, and Friday focuses on a lot. In addition, the new technology of contraception and antibiotics has apparently made sexual repression a need of the past, and books like these help to update our software in accordance with the new hardware.

On the flip side, surveys show that women’s sense of happiness in the United States has decreased since the 1960s. It seems to me that when you make people live incongruent with their nature, their well-being decreases.

You would expect clear proof of the opposite, namely that women’s happiness has increased by their sexual liberation and the variety of partners that are socially acceptable to have. Nancy Friday would probably say something like “Women haven’t had the time to adjust” or “We just need a couple more generations before the poisonous ideas become weeded out.” Yeah, but how many generations? For how long? A theory needs a condition for failure, otherwise, it’s just a blind ideology.

My Secret Garden was the first of Friday's works that I read. I found it freeing, as this window into other women's sexual fantasies helped me adjust my sense of 'normal' and accept the thoughts swirling around in my own head.

I frequently recommend this book to people who are struggling to understand their own fantasies and sexual preferences, or else find it difficult to express their needs.

Plus, it includes some really hot stuff!

This book does a great job of cataloging and destigmatizing women's sexual fantasies. For me, it normalized a lot of stuff that I had thought of as kinky or niche. There's some mediocre psychological analysis included but honestly the uncensored crowdsourced fantasies are the fun part! I would have given this five stars if it were a little less repetitive.