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Share something that stood out for you while reading My Secret Garden and tell why it’s meaningful to you. It can be a quote, a paragraph, a story, or a chapter. Please reference a page number, if possible.
What was surprising for me and new, is that although there is 400 fantasies Nancy Friday has collected, she managed to find 16 common principal themes that run through all of them. So although the world of fantasy is endless and as open as universe, still our sexual fantasies are dancing around common topics..and what is different, is that each women is giving more individual dressing to the theme, so it makes this fantasy personalized and her, but topics like: having audience, rape, other women, etc. Also the topics of rooms where a nice surprise for me, there is a freedom in allowing ourself to be in very different situations, which are not common in our usual life..and that is beautiful. Also great Nancy Friday managed to find this topics, and show them in such a structure. This is documentary and discovery in itself.
Something that stood out for me is Nancys mission of truthfully representing female sexuality. No matter if the fantasies were disturbing to her she posted them because she knew the healing that could come to others from reading it all. She really wanted womens true sexuality to be shown, not an edited “acceptable” version of it. There were no topics off limits, or too risky to publish and I think a lot of women feel so normal because it gave women permission to fantasize about anything with no shame guilt or limits made.
Something that stood out to me in Nancy Friday’s books is how extreme most of the fantasies are. The themes are not fantasies you would typically expect coming from women. Four of the most prominent themes seem to be incest, bestiality, pedophilia, and rape, which are topics that are extremely taboo, and are for a lot of people where the line is drawn for acceptable fantasies. I think her work is important because it shows that women are capable of the same types of fantasies as men. Her books increase acceptance of fantasies and reduce shame and stigma.
“Someone has defined a puritan as one who is plagued by the fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. When it comes to sex, we secretly think we may be the self-inhibited puritans ourselves, after all, and that someone, somewhere, is having a better sexual life.” (226) This definition of a puritan resounds to me because this is where I come from. My upbringing was puritan at its best and this simple definition helps me to understand the jealousy hidden behind such a moralistic attitude. It also gives me input about why jealousy is the exact opposite of sexual pleasure, fulfillment, and freedom.
I was very impressed with all the women she was able to connect with and give a platform to their fantasies. What stood out was Friday’s drive to bring awareness to women’s fantasies. ” Obviously the book will be a rich mine of psychiatrics, professional and amateur. It is a mine for anyone interested in a woman and their feelings , those feelings so long forced inwards through fear and prudery, through the masculine assumption that women- well, ladies, at any rate – experience only the very faintest strings of sex and mostly lie back and think of England ”
Friday, emphases that the richness of these women’s fantasies is based on the result of generations of psychic repression. The many themes chronicled in her book represnt the vast extent of women’s fantasy’s and puts to bed the former notion that women are sexually fickle, frigid and sexually immature.
What stood out for me was its place in history and how ground breaking it was. Also, that the same week this book came out the Cosmo article about women not being capable of fantasy also came out. I appreciated the women’s vulnerability. I also noticed it was SUPER dated and looking back with 2024 eyes on it there were parts that I found problematic. The lesbian fantasies were weird to me. The women couldn’t seem to get beyond one of them needing to be “the guy.” There was some things about particularly black men that was objectifying and seemed frankly racist. Overall I appreciate it as a text of its time and something that paved the way for us to be in the world as we are now, not that things are perfect now, but for example, my honey and I both have vulvas and we never say to each other, “okay, so which one of us is the guy today?” We get to exist in this non-binary place that really wasn’t there in the early 70s. I know the vulnerability of these women sharing their fantasies, no matter how strange they seem to me now, are what paved the way for my life today.
What stood out for me was the timing of the book’s release : on the same day, as some research article saying women don’t have sexual fantasies. Well, My Secret Garden sure debunks that myth. This book decreased my shame about my sexual fantasies and reading the stories of other women made me feel completely normal and gave me great ideas to fantasize about.
Also, “Sexual freedom was never a part of modern feminism, never celebrated as such at Feminist Headquarters.” XV”MS will decided what women’s fantasies are”xvi “ ….Matriarchal Feminist are consciously determined to leave sex of the agenda” xvi. It is hard for me to comprehend that the women’s movement didn’t support the sexual revolution. Leaving out which I believe a core right “ the right to sexual freedom” The women’s right to have control over her own body, a right to pleasure. It makes me want to talk more openly to women about their right to “speak their mind and state their pleasure” wether to another woman or man.
I listened to several of the stories and honestly had a hard time enjoying it on audio. Perhaps for me reading it would have been better as the voices were hard to overcome. I enjoyed the freedom that was felt by those releasing their stories but was not shocked or appalled by them. I believe that we all deserve to be heard and Nancy’s openness for those to share was amazing. I loved that the most.
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