This is perhaps the longest read of any book I have ever read. I started reading this book in February 2012 and somehow never got to finish it. Picked it up again in April 2019 and started all over again only to come across the bookmark I placed back in 2012.
To say this book doesn't come as a shock especially on some social/moral opinions will be a mild description. That said, giving a candid and open minded view on it does really help a woman like me to come to terms that one is really not alone with what goes through your mind and compatibility is of the essence in relationships...

I read Nancy Friday's great compilation of interviews with women back when it first debuted and generate the storm of controversy as well as the legion of women who finally knew they were not depraved for having sexual fantasies. It was a great step forward for feminism, and a libidinal feast for a young male with a healthy interest in what turns women on. It's still great reading for men or women interested in that topic.

This book was groundbreaking in its time, but in a time where any fantasy is explicitly displayed on the internet, it's not as thrilling as it once was. Also, the author gets a little... exuberant about the effect of women's fantasy lives. Healthy fantasy and sex lives are important to an individual and a couple in a relationship. This book could possibly help a woman to feel empowered and unashamed of her own strange fantasies, I just don't think it could possibly have the impact it once did because that ground is already broken.

Clearly a groundbreaking work in its day. I found it a bit dated though, with its early 70s vibe. That's not to say that this book isn't still valuable, just it might benefit from rephrasing in more modern prose.

The categories are odd too. For instance, the lesbian section is mostly about bestiality. Why this should be so is unclear, especially as both these themes recur frequently.

Interesting. While I highly enjoyed the collection of sexual fantasies, and I think that this is beneficial to any woman who's ever felt uncomfortable with her own, I take issue with the presented universality.

I don't think that the perception of race as presented in this book is the same for every woman, and so I don't think that the room assigned to the cultural perception of black men belongs. I think that other countries, especially countries with different racial compositions than ours, would have a very different perspective on racialized fantasies. I'd like to see this same work done by a lot of other women, in a lot of other places, to get a more balanced view of what GLOBAL fantasy looks like because this one is speaking mainly (though I acknowledge not entirely) to white American women.

making a reading list of all pieces referenced in ContraPoints's Twilight analysis vid

"My Secret Garden" is a collection of many women's fantasies. First published in 1973, it was rather outspoken at the time. Nancy Friday breaks fantasies down into fifteen main rooms: anonymity, audience, rape, pain, domination, terror, the forbidden, transformation, earth mother, incest, animals, big black men, young boys, fetishists, and other women. Towards the end Friday also includes some women who played out their fantasies, and some who actively engaged in fantasy with their partner.

Friday tends to include her thoughts in between sections, and occasionally when introducing people. I found her thoughts tended to be writing for the heterosexual female reader, and not necessary for the book. I think the book would have been more interesting if it was just women's fantasies and chaptered by different themes.

All in all, this was an informative, interesting, and erotic read.

n  You can go so much further in fantasy than you can in reality . . .
__________
‘I have never heard other women express thoughts like these. I thought I must be some sort of freak or pervert for having such sexually “wrong” ideas. Now I feel I can accept myself. Thank God, I am not alone.’

But remember, pornography means the writing of prostitutes and My Secret Garden is composed of the writings of ordinary women—you, me, and our next-door-neighbour.
__________
As women move more strongly into their recently won sexual freedom, and lead ether historic role of second (and ‘silent’) sex behind, I predict that they will, ironically, get into domination fantasies more and more. But the move will be in two different directions. First, the new reality of being man’s equal makes them unconsciously nervous about their identity as women, and so throws them back into longing for the traditional, safe, and ‘known’ role vis-à-vis the dominating man . . .

P.S. a few thoughts I’ve had on sexual fantasies. It seems that the more liberated I become (I’m really involved in Women’s Liberation now) the more I fantasise about the speaking and the bondage. Since I’m fully liberated in my work situation, social life, etc., it’s almost as if I’m trying to achieve some sort of counterbalance to this liberation in my sexual life.n

__________
The only surprising thing in here is the sheer amount of bestiality; both real and imagined . . .

It seems actress  Gilian Anderson is eliciting  what Friday elicited all those years ago (presumably in ignorance to the latter's work). It will be interesting to compare the modern compilation should it be published . . .

4 Stars

She has a penchant for difficult men, types who beat her up either physically or mentally. I've never known her to be attracted to a "nice guy", and I get the feeling there's something in her that would turn even a nice guy into a bastard. 


A strange book and one that didn't quite go as I planned. 

It's a list of sexual fantasies she has collected and commentary not on the fantasies but on how people react to them. 

It's very dated - you can tell the time it is from and some of the stories are wild and horrible but their fantasies so I guess that's where discretion comes into it. 

While I wouldn't shelf it as a feminist read it is nice read on what women desired at the time.

An exercise in projection and selection bias, My Secret Garden offers more of the author’s personal inclinations than the broader spectrum of female sexual fantasies. Rather than achieving its purported goal of humanizing or destigmatizing these fantasies, the book inadvertently does the opposite.

Friday puts together a patchwork of uncommon, often disordered relationships with intimacy and uses them as evidence to argue, “We’re all strange.” This creates a skewed portrayal that favours voices from the margins of the socio-sexual spectrum. Her interspersed commentary, filled with weak justifications—such as praising dogs as superior partners for their “unconditional love”—only underscores the lack of critical depth.

Ultimately, the book comes across as a self-indulgent exercise, thinly veiled in feminist lingerie, attempting to legitimize its content (and quite possibly the author’s own disordered behaviours) by claiming universal relevance. A disappointing, at times terribly uncomfortable, read that falls far short of its intended purpose.

It was purely research...no, seriously!

I don't remember how I first heard about this book, but I think it was one of the first "erotic" pieces I read. It's a collection of fantasies submitted by anonymous women, at a time when repression was the norm. Some of the fantasies are vanilla, some are a bit scary, and some are quite hot. By the time the author/editor began compiling the later books in this series, women grew bolder in revealing their secret desires, and the later books grow hoter and raunchier, but this is an interesting introduction, and in a way a glimpse into the pre-sexual revolution.

- 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