From 2019 to 2023, Gillian Anderson was a sexologist. At least that's the role she played in the series Sex Education broadcast on Netflix. Her character, Dr. Jean Milburn, dispensed sexual advice to patients whose love lives were falling apart, or amounted to unsatisfying one-night stands. To prepare for the role, she says, she read My secret garden: An anthology of female sexual fantasiesan investigation that the author Nancy Friday conducted in 1973 on the erotic desires of women (published in French by Balland). She was barely 5 years old when the book arrived in English bookstores and women began talking in hushed tones about their most intimate fantasies. Reading the book for the first time, fifty years after its first publication, the actress was struck by the feeling of shame that accompanied women in expressing their desires. The actress wondered if things had changed since then, now that shows like Sex Education allow us to talk about sex in prime time, that porn is accessible to everyone and that different sexual orientations are more visible. The fruit of these reflections, the book Our desires was born at Denoël editions.
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A hundred intimate testimonies collected in a book
In 1973, Nancy Friday had placed an ad in the newspaper asking the women of his time to express their desires. In 2023, the star of Sex Education in turn carries out the operation by opening an online portal, Dear Gillianwhich collects countless testimonies. Their compilation thus gave birth to a dense manual, of a thousand pages. What do these writings have in common? These fantasies have never been confessed to anyone, they are secrets never confessed, at most whispered to a friend over a gin and tonic or to a trusted partner under the duvet. They are impulses, a way of putting on paper desires that we would like to see come true by freeing them from the taboo and embarrassment that surround them. The letters were written by teenage girls who have never had sex and have written down their expectations, singles who cannot escape the spiral of affairs that end after one night, women who rediscover desire after menopause, mothers, wives, girlfriends, queer women, transgender women and even non-binary people.
Gillian Anderson then classified these precious testimonies by thematic chapters: there is one, for example, devoted to “kink sexuality”, on fantasies considered deviant, which brings together variations of the desire “to be desired and adored” apparently very popular , the idea of looking, of being looked at in turn, or even of being dominated. Gillian Anderson makes it clear from the outset: it simply aligned the texts, but in no way has the skills, nor the legitimacy, to analyze them. She is not the author of the book in the strict sense, but rather its coordinator. “I am not an expert and I have no professional qualifications in this field”she warns in the introduction to the work. “I am an actress. As such, I will not venture to decipher these letters, nor to put forward theories on femininity or sex in general. What I can do, however, is present these incredible testimonies here, so that you, dear readers, can savor them without filter. I see myself as the curator of this rich collection of singular voices, which I have brought together in the form of a book.”
Gillian Anderson – Our Desires
To what extent are women's fantasies similar?
Are women's fantasies similar? Very little. They oscillate between dreams of gentle men through which they (re)discover pleasure with tenderness, desires for fiery nights with strangers or frolics with tentacled aliens. These desires are not indicators, but evidence that each woman does not have a single, monolithic face. For some, fantasy keeps company: “I would do it twice a day if I could, whereas he can easily do without it. I was often ashamed of wanting to make love, of wanting it too much and of expressing a desire. At some point, my fantasies started to keep me company.” For other women, it's an itch to scratch until it goes: “I want to be an object, not a woman. I want to exist in this primordial state. To escape the incessant mental load.” Others, again, use it to escape daily boredom for a while: “I take off, I leave everything, I forget everything. I fly, time stops. It's a touch of madness in my well-ordered life. Just her and me. It's my madness, my time to myself, my unspeakable desire, my repressed thoughts. It’s a gift, an indelible mark.” We don't know much about the people behind these desires. We have no name, no age. Such a woman can be me, so can you. Among the contributions, there is also that, anonymous, of the actress, who says she wants to mix her secret with others without giving it more importance.
