Nancy Friday's books are so refreshing to me. The first one I read was this one- MY SECRET GARDEN. The "garden" in question has nothing to do with soil and plants. This is the first book of women's sexual fantasies collected by Nancy Friday starting in the 1970's. She was not a psychologist or social scientist. She was a woman who wanted other women in a world that was finally opening up to female sexuality to be free to anonymously unveil their deepest sexual fantasies for other women to enjoy and be inspired by. The women and girls, using first names only, described their sexual history and went on to share, quite graphically, their fantasies.
In the early 1970's, the feminist movement was cranking up in earnest and the pill had finally become available more freely to women who were not married. There was much more freedom for women and this book caught the spirit of that. For those who would like to be refreshed by the fantasies and lives of real women telling their real stories rather than porn and semi porn published by men showing what they think our fantasies are or should be, check out all of Nancy Friday's books. Enjoy!

I remember reading this when it came out and being slightly shocked: not because so many women had so many fantasies but because they were so varied and well-developed. I've come a long way since then and I have an idea that women have, too, judging by some of what they've told me and some of the books currently available. I remember the scene in "When Harry Met Sally" where Meg Ryan describes a fantasy to Billy Crystal that seemed so vague when I was reading erotic literature at that time, by both men and women, and wondered where they found someone either so boring or (more likely) so reserved. A groundbreaking book, for men and women.

Oh my good God, this book is filthy. A book warped with women's pseudo-psycho sexual weirdness. A book sooo vastly wrong and repellent to the natural karma of human sexual nature, it makes Fifty Shades read like a Teletubby romp. In fact, this book is sooo filthy you will find your hands blushing shamefully, just because you are holding it, they and perhaps other extremities will glow with guilt.

Unless, you too, are pseudo-psycho sexually warped you will feel like you need to go straight to church and repent after reading it.

Now let me get this point across clearly. It is sooo filthy that I wouldn't even tarnish my righteous catholic dignity by going into its content publicly, and it is sooo salaciously smutty that I dared not give it more than three stars because then family and acquaintances might assume I had the audacity to enjoy reading it. What? Never! That is, of course, impossible and just well, utterly utterly filthy! :)

Retain an open mind if you read this book and never digest content in the presence of nuns or priests.. oh but wait, what page was that fantasy on again?

Now lets see.. where can I get the sequel..

This 1973 book was groundbreaking for its time but badly needs updating and a better grouning. It could be seen as a collection of dirty stories, yes, but it also does give insight into the female psyche and I wonder how much would still apply today. Part of the problem is I feel this isn't very grounded or representative. Friday seems to have collected the fantasies of a rather small range of women demographically.

Friday wrote she advertised for female fantasies in a magazine and newspaper and collected over 400 of them. Are these educated women? Wealthier than average? Is there racial diversity in her sample? Lesbians and bisexuals in proportional numbers? How much of this is true cross-culturally or does this only hold for Americans? And how much has changed since 1973 given the impact of the feminist movement? She divides the fantasies into 16 "Houses" of the most popular stock themes. Would Rape Fantasy still be number three decades after the heyday of the bodice-ripper romance? Would "Pain and Masochism" rank higher in our age of Fifty Shades of Grey? Would "Big Black Men" still make it on the hit parade or would it come lower or higher since it's less "forbidden" for white women?

All that said, a friend of mine interested in gender studies says she'd still be interested in this book because she knows of no more recent or rigorous study on the subject--which rather astonishes me.

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!

Delicious. Back in the seventies this book proved that women were naughty, dirty and utterly erotic. Anyone sitting at home ashamed of their fantasies now should pick this gem up and be liberated. No matter how obscene your fantasies are Nancy Friday is here to show you not only that you are not alone but that you're not even really trying.

There is one sad addendum - if you read later books by Firday you'll find that with the rise of porn, the internet and a general openness in society about about sex the originality and bizarre nature of the fantasies declines. With freedom, it seems, comes uniformity.

An erotic women's studies book, I enjoyed the cerebral side of Friday's commentary. A fascinating look at the private lives of women and the people they choose to incorporate in their fantasy life.

Of its time - primarily blown away by the number of women married and/or with children in their very early twenties or earlier!?

Smut be smutting but there's smuttier on AO3.

I have two very distinct feelings about this book. The first is that I am glad it was written. Having a collection of women's fantasies is kind of comforting. While I am comfortable with mine now when I was younger I felt embarrassed and a touch shameful because it had never been something anyone had discussed with me and I did not have any comprehension of what was "normal." The second is that the sections before each list of fantasies are very and at times very very out of date or inaccurate in their psychological reasoning behind each type of fantasy. A few show some insight but in general many should be updated so that they apply less Freudian ideas and readers without any knowledge about modern psych aren't misled.

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Ok admittedly I did not read all of it. I was interested because of Contrapoints' "Twilight" video and Gillian Anderson's new book, which is kind of a 21st century companion piece to this one. I'm fascinated by Nancy Friday as a person, I watched some of her interviews, and I do commend her for publishing this in the 1970s. Some of the things that are in here are absolutely vile, and not avoidable (I was already planning on skipping a couple chapters). That's why I could not finish this book lol. But I guess if you're going to publish a book like this in the 1970s you might as well not censor it at all, and add weird Freudian analysis. Friday is clearly not a scientist, but she does astutely observe some of the tropes that still exist in women's erotic fiction today.

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.