Dubberley - Garden of desires: the evolution of womens sexual fantasies

Contents

Female sexual fantasy has only been openly accepted since 1973. How has female sexual fantasy and reality changed since then?

What is a fantasy? When do fantasies start? Why do we fantasise? Do we want our dreams to come true? Are fantasies normal? Why does it matter anyway?

From dreams of desire to the reality of rape fantasies: is submission relinquishing control or taking it?

Women owning their anger and taking control or appeasing their sexual guilt? Do dominant fantasies really put women in charge?

A sign of sexual freedom or a result of corrupting images? A way to feel beautiful or reinforce feelings of low self-worth?

The voracious woman is a popular figure, and in group sex she can exploit her desire to the full but is group sex just about excess and hedonism or do women crave something more?

From loving encounters to taboo experiences, partner sex and romance dont always go hand-in-hand.

Straight women with penises and lesbians as gay men; the rejection of traditional roles. What is a woman anyway?

Outside the norm of acceptable fantasies lies a host of original and esoteric imaginings. Explore the rarer blooms in the garden of desires.

Are women living the dream or are they using fantasy to help them come to terms with dissatisfaction? Is it possible to answer Freuds eternal question, what do women want?

Are we surrounded by sex in modern society or just sex myths? How do fantasies affect reality if at all? Is the sexual revolution over or has it only just begun?

How the research was compiled.

Sexual and academic terms used in the book.

My favourite fantasy is group sex with three or four women.

My history professor, hes so damn attractive, in my fantasy hes doing me really hard.

Im the meek little chambermaid of some wicked Victorian doctor who straps me naked to a table and objectifies me completely.

There is no such thing as forbidden fruit in the garden of desires.

Discover real womens most secret fantasies in this highly erotic, revealing and provocative exploration of the female sexual imagination. In the twenty-first century world, is the sexual revolution over?

Or has it barely begun?

Emily Dubberley is one of the UKs leading sex writers. After completing her dissertation on whether women wanted their fantasies to come true, in 2001 she created Cliterati, the UKs original fantasy website for women. Cliterati has subsequently attracted international press coverage and reaches 10,000+ visitors per week (300,000 page views per month). It was shortlisted for best sex and relationships blog in the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards 2012 and is currently shortlisted for best blog in the Xcite Book Awards (Emily is also shortlisted as Best Sexpert in the same awards).

Emily founded the Lovers Guide magazine, Scarlet magazine and Erotic Knave magazine, and is the author of more than 25 books about sex, love and relationships internationally published, selling over a million copies. She has freelanced for numerous publications including Cosmopolitan, Grazia, Easy Living, FHM, More, Elle, Mens Health, The Guardian and Glamour, and has had articles syndicated worldwide. She wrote and presented a monthly podcast show Sex Talk With Emily Dubberley for Audible.co.uk, and has extensive radio experience with stations including LBC, Kerrang! and Radio 4. She is frequently quoted as a sexpert in magazines including Cosmopolitan, Elle and Company, has been involved with TV shows for all the terrestrial channels and various satellite channels, and writes for numerous websites including iVillage.co.uk, TheSite.org and MSN.

For more information, see http://www.dubberley.com.

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First published in the UK in 2013 by Black Lace,
an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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Copyright Emily Dubberley, 2013

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Thanks to Nancy Friday for planting the first seed
and all the women whove shared their fantasies and
helped the garden grow.

FEMALE SEXUAL FANTASY began in 1973. That may sound ridiculous, but until Nancy Friday wrote My Secret Garden, female sexual fantasy did not officially exist. Not even in the pages of womens magazines.

Anas Nin may have achieved a certain measure of renown for Delta of Venus and Little Birds, but these erotic classics were published posthumously in 1978. The Story of O pre-empted Fifty Shades of Grey by 58 years and has sold millions of copies but Anne Desclos hid behind her pseudonym for forty years, only eventually revealed as Pauline Rage at 87 years of age. More significantly they, and the handful of openly sexual female writers before them, all wrote fiction. Friday was the first woman to collect womens real sexual fantasies and, in doing so, show that women had a sexuality of their own a highly contentious idea in 1973.

In the month of My Secret Gardens release Helen Gurley Brown (then editor of Cosmo) ran a feature written by her in-house psychiatrist, with the opening line, Women do not have sexual fantasies, period. Men do.

And it wasnt just Cosmo. At the time Friday wrote My Secret Garden, the mainstream thinking of sex therapists, psychologists or psychiatrists was that women didnt have sexual fantasies. Friday was conflicted by this information, as she fantasised, and set out to discover whether she was the only woman who did. Apparently, even when talking to some of the most sexually active women in New York and London, she was met by confusion. Only her persistence, placing discreet classified ads and interviewing rare, open friends helped prove that, for some women at least, sexual fantasy existed.