Is Gillian Anderson’s New Anthology of Women’s Sexual Fantasies Too Restrictive?

As if starring in three seasons of Sex Education wasn’t enough, Gillian Anderson’s embarking on a brand new project set to get our pulses racing.

At Bloomsbury, Anderson is leading an update of Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, a groundbreaking 1973 book that collected anonymous sexual fantasies.

Last month she wrote for the The Guardian:

Tell me. Fantasies, frustrations, explorations, the forbidden, childhood, sounds, fetishes, guilt, insatiability. Fifty years on, the boundaries have been erased, no more so than in our own sexuality: BDSM, the modern meaning of gender etc, anything is up for grabs.

But despite her overtures to the taboo, submissions of fantasies for Anderson’s project are subject to strict guidelines. According to the guidelines—and unlike women’s actual sexual fantasies—the following are banned:

⋅ Sexual activity involving “rape,” “graphic violence” or “dangerous sexual acts.”
⋅ Anything racist, sexist or homophobic.
⋅ Anything that “advocates for readers to engage in any activity that is illegal in the United Kingdom”—such as sex in a public loo, voyeurism, or soliciting sex work on the street.
⋅ “References to real life events”—include events which only involve yourself.

In its notes on anonymity, editors write: “We have spent hundreds of hours discussing how to maintain anonymity, which has informed the decisions we have taken, including not to name the letter writers in the book, or credit the letters they receive.”

On the request not to use identifying information (such as names, pseudonyms and places), they explain: “Protecting your privacy (and that of others) is at the heart of our mission.” The exclusion of fantasies outside the guidelines is not addressed (and Bloomsbury declined to comment).

“Bait and switch” is as much of a turn-off in real life as it is in publishing. Just when you think you’re about to get a thick and steamy anthology of what women want, we find the same censorship and control at play that keeps classics like Awakening and (ahem) Fifty Shades off the shelves .

While it’s understandable that editors (including Anderson) shouldn’t have to read exploitative or triggering reader submissions, part of the impact of My Secret Garden was its inclusion of fantasies about non-consensual sex. The brilliance of Friday’s book was to report on the true nature of women’s fantasy life—amplifying a quiet truth that remains unpalatable to this day, as well distinguishing between what women fantasize about and the kind of sex we actually want.

Justin Lehmiller is the author of a key 2018 survey of 4,175 American citizens and residents into sexual fantasies, published in his Tell Me What You Want. His work revealed that the majority of men and women report fantasizing about forced sex.

Lehmiller, who is also a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, says Friday’s work came up “time and time again” in his research, illuminating women’s sexuality in the same way as Alfred Kinsey’s.

“Friday’s work was shocking to many people because it revealed that many women are fantasizing about things they aren’t ‘supposed’ to be fantasizing about,” he adds.

But rather than facing waves of outrage, Lehmiller says the most common reaction he gets from Tell Me What You Want readers is relief: “The single most common reaction I’ve had to the book is something along the lines of, ‘thank you for writing this, I feel normal for the first time in my life’—to me it shows how little most of us know about sexual fantasies.”

“It’s also a sign that, despite people writing about fantasies for decades, little has changed. Almost all of us have fantasies. Very few of us talk about them. That was true when Nancy Friday published her work, and it’s still true today.”

In Lehmiller’s own work, he clarifies the difference between fantasies—what we want—and desires—what we want to do: “Most people have fantasies that are also desires—but few of them have ever acted upon them. For example, about 80 percent of participants said their favorite fantasy is a desire, but only about 20 percent had ever actually tried to do it in real life.”

He was also interested in findings on how fantasies vary across the lifespan, he adds.

“Most research on this topic has focused on young, college-age adults, so it was fascinating to see what mid-life and older adults were fantasizing about,” he says. “What I found is that young adults are the most kinky, but also the most romantic in their fantasies. As people approach midlife, both of those fantasies seem to decrease, while fantasies about non-monogamy, group sex, taboos, and novelties increase. In older age, most fantasies tend to decrease (but they do not disappear). Fantasies are with us throughout our lives, but the specific things that turn us on seem to change quite a bit with time.”

Lehmiller says he adores Anderson and is all for opening up and normalizing conversations about fantasies, but feels puzzled by the submission guidelines.

“A lot of women have fantasies that are taboo, and those are the fantasies the publisher seemingly does not want people to submit, so I am curious to know their reasoning for this and how they’re going to address the subject of taboo fantasies in the book,” he says. “I won’t pass judgment without having seen the final product, but if you heavily filter the fantasies that you collect, as this project seems to do, it runs the risk of painting an overly sanitized portrait of women’s sexuality.”

Andrew Davidson is a sex and relationships therapist and joint lead of the Diploma in Psychosexual Therapy at Tavistock Relationships, part of the UK’s eminent Tavistock Institute.

Davidson says books like Lehmiller’s and Nancy Friday’s give a sort of legitimacy to a range of fantasies. (He also praises the work of Brett Kahr in this field).

“Lots of clients ask, ‘What do other couples and individuals think?’ Research helps us say, ‘Other people think this way, and some of it may be consistent with what you’re thinking about’—whatever they’re fantasizing about, it’s OK,” he says.

Submissions to Dear Gillian record demographic information (such as race, “ethnic group” and income bracket) to help the project stay diverse and representative—Davidson’s particularly interested in how Anderson’s project will include women from a range of sexual orientations. Her project has the opportunity to represent identities that Friday’s books did not: for example, talking about women’s experience of asexuality or pansexuality.

Books that survey sexual fantasies are particularly helpful for people who fantasize about non-consensual sex, he explains—by definition, fantasizing about something they don’t want to do: “Some clients come along really worried about that. ‘Why do I fantasize about this? But actually I don’t want it in reality.’”

Natalie Fiennes, the author of Behind Closed Doors: Sex Education Transformed, would go even further.

Writing Behind Closed Doors, Fiennes looked back on her own sex education, growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s, and realized how ill-equipped she was to enter into adulthood. She spoke to a lot of young people about their experiences with sex education and about sexuality and although she didn’t specifically look into sexual fantasy she wrote plenty about shame, and the ways in which existing hegemonies (race, gender, ability, class) exclude certain sexualities and sexual expressions.

“Culturally, we are still living with the mores of purity and shame, and discussions about sexual fantasy are therefore hidden from plain sight,” Fiennes says. “There should be no conversation off the table. There should be no fantasy not worth discussion.”

Unlike Lehmiller and Davidson, Fiennes wholeheartedly welcomes the Dear Gillian project. “Anderson’s new book is surely a good thing—lifting the lid on generations of silence.

“Until those conversations start happening, in a meaningful, non-judgemental way—in classrooms, in porn, in the media, online—then we are living in the shadows and further reinforcing the toxic behavior of the past.”

Milly Evans is a sex educator and author of Honest. When it came to covering fantasies, Evans found that while some of Gen Z are excited to discover what they’re into, some (just like Davidson’s adult clients) feel embarrassed or ashamed about what turns them on: “Often that’s because they’ve either had no sex education and think they’re alone in having fantasies, or have had educators, friends or family members imply that having sexual fantasies is weird, perverted or disgusting—which isn’t true!”

Evans says a lot of Honest was inspired by questions from young people on social media, or things she herself had wanted to know more about growing up. Much 21st-century sex education—for adults and teenagers—is now sourced from a search bar, so Evans is well aware of the advantages of traditional publishing when it comes to evidence-led info.

“It’s more likely that a teen is going to ask Google, ‘Is it weird to be into [X]?,’ than ‘Are sexual fantasies normal?,’ which might mean they end up finding a social media post or forum rather than a blog post from a trusted organization.”

Like Davidson, she’s looking forward to the Dear Gillian project. “I’m curious about how the public and media will respond to the project because I think her status will protect her from some of the stigma that other lesser-known writers in the sex space face,” Evans says. “Gillian Anderson has taken so much from her time working on Sex Education and her profile alone will open a far more mainstream conversation about fantasy, which I’m interested to see unfold.”

Evans says she wants to see more curiosity about fantasy—and that in her experience, covering the subject in a book rather than on social media means a better quality conversation.

“When people are feeling worried or upset about their own fantasies—whether that’s because they don’t know if having fantasies is normal, or because their fantasies are of a more “extreme” nature—it can be difficult for them to speak to someone without feeling like they’re going to be shut down or mocked,” the author says.

“There are some important conversations to be had about consent, violence, legality and the difference between fantasy and real life. At the moment a lot of those conversations are happening in black-and-white or censored ways on social media, which isn’t necessarily helpful and doesn’t allow for a deeper exploration of a very nuanced topic.”

If Bloomsbury’s project ignores the true breadth of women’s fantasies, the result will roll back the progress Friday made 50 years ago—and shut out the research that authors like Lehmiller have undertaken since then. The prospect of going back to the 1970s’ sexual conservatism will certainly get pulses racing, for all the wrong reasons.