Female sexuality: a man’s view

For many women, the sex they have in their heads may be more stimulating than the physical nuts and bolts of any coupling, no matter how hot.

While it’s a good idea for men to read this new book, but the real audience is women, writes Stephen Romei.

Why, you ask, is a middle-aged heterosexual man reviewing a book about women’s sexual fantasies? Here’s my thinking: women have the fantasies, men need to learn about them (I say this, even as I acknowledge that quite a few of the fantasies described in this new book don’t involve men, but rather same-sex passion.)

Want by Gillian Anderson

Want, a book about what makes women hot to trot, at least in their auto-erotic imaginary lives, is curated by the American actor Gillian Anderson, which makes sense given her role as Margaret Thatcher in The Crown.

Joking!

The role that’s more relevant: Anderson played a sex therapist in the comedy-drama series Sex Education. In preparation, she read Nancy Friday’s 1973 book My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies and realised that “for some of us, the sex we have in our head may be more stimulating than the physical nuts and bolts of any coupling, no matter how hot”.

Want is an attempt to update Friday’s book 50 years on, a half-century during which so much has changed in the social and sexual spheres. “Have women’s deepest internal desires also changed?’’ Anderson asks in her introduction.

Anderson asked women around the globe to send her a “Dear Gillian” letter revealing what floats their boats. She received enough to fill a 1000-page book, so her job was to decide what to include and what to omit.

All of the contributors are anonymous, and rightly so. If their names were known, this book would be a stalker’s bible. At the end of each letter the women are identified by race, nationality, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, relationship status and, for some reason, income range.

Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists will have a ball with this. Is there a particular erotic make-believe shared by women who earn under $50,000, for example, or women who are atheists or Buddhists?

The letters are organised in groups, which means the chapter headings indicate what’s about to unfold. You may not want to read Rough and Ready over breakfast, unless of course you consider Coco-Pops and a white Irish atheist who wants “all my holes filled” a perfect match.

Other chapters include Off Limits, in which a white American atheist wants it in a church, “staring at Jesus on the cross”, and Kink, in which an otherwise unidentified married woman “gets really hot” at the idea of “breastfeeding adults, mostly men”.

The most challenging chapter is The Captive. Anderson acknowledges some of the fantasies “blur the lines between consensual and non-consensual”.

A white bisexual Finnish woman thinks about a gangbang with a group of “incredibly attractive biker men, who are holding me captive at their base”. A Hispanic Taoist American fancies being “kidnapped by a terrorist organisation” and having sex with one of its members.

There’s a lot of humour, intended and unintended. A Swiss heterosexual’s letter is short enough to quote in full: “I practice lucid dreaming. Every night I dream I have sex with the actor Pedro Pascal.”

And the white American atheist who likes “my men hairy and emotionally vulnerable”, makes me chuckle because I know I can only meet her halfway on that one.

That’s one of the intrigues of reading this as a man. If a woman wanted to turn fantasy into reality, would I be up for it? To the white Austrian who wants to be ravaged by a vampire, sorry but no. Ditto to the Welsh Christian feminist who wants to froth and bubble while “being milked, in milking stalls’’.

I add a caveat preceded by a home truth. I have an X-rated fantasy involving Gillian Anderson. She has included her own letter, also anonymous. Whatever it is, I’m so up for it, even if it’s the one involving an alien.

The best chapter is the final one: Gently, Gently. Here women write not about bikers, terrorists, vampires or handsome ETs but about the ordinary romance missing from their lives. It is reminiscent of Lina’s story in the superb television series Three Women, based on the 2019 book by Lisa Taddeo. A white British atheist wants to be “kissed on the lips, gently, roughly with passion, once again before I am no more”. A white American bisexual starts her letter with “Every time I have sex, I’m generally heavily intoxicated or under the influence of drugs.” Her fantasy is the saddest and truest. It touches on what is reality for many women. “Is it crazy,’’ she asks, “that my wildest sexual fantasy is to feel safe?”

I semi-joked at the start that it is a good idea for men to read this book. And it is. But the real audience is women, the contributors and their readers, who are sharing the “mysterious heart of women’s innermost yearnings”, as Anderson puts it, and realising that in doing so they are far from alone.

Stephen Romei is a writer, critic and adjunct research fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University