Gillian Anderson: Sexual fantasies, orgasm gaps, and shame

0:00A quick heads up before we start this episode that it includes some pretty spicy language so it might be worth making sure your headphones are definitely connected connected properly. Hello and welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. Today, the author of this month's Happy Place book club read, Gillian Anderson. She's collected a series of essays from women who've written about their deepest sexual fantasies and it's called Want. I was barely five years old in 1973 when the novelist Nancy Friday's cult classic My Secret Garden, women's sexual fantasies, made its way onto the bookshelves and into the handbags of women in the US.

0:46Just seven when it reached the women of Middle England. My Secret Garden was proof that women enjoyed as rich and diverse and erotic in a life as men. I read My Secret Garden for the first time when I was preparing for my role as the sex therapist Dr. Jean Milburn in the TV series Sex Education. The letters and interviews were astonishingly intimate and very raw. Their unfiltered and painful honesty shook me. They weren't polished or trying to be literary. they seem to come straight from the mysterious heart of women's innermost yearning. The human imagination has few limits, and our sexual desires and fantasies are no different, yet are still treated as taboo.

1:43Friday conceived the book as a response to a male editor's objection to an erotic fantasy in one of her novels. A response considered so dangerous, it was banned in the Republic of Ireland. Bringing female fantasies into the open also brought up contentious questions. Did women want to act on these imaginings? What did it mean to have a fantasy that was unusual, forbidden or even illegal? What might it tell us about the established gender roles that had been foisted upon women? So much has changed in our social and sexual relations in the 50 years since My Secret Garden was first published. Have women's deepest internal desires also changed?

2:38Now are you part of the Happy Place Book Club? I hope you are. Oh, it's so fun. We love chatting about books over there. It's my favourite thing. We're on Instagram at Happy Place Book Club. So do come and join us if you're a fellow bookworm. Each month we read a different book together. We swap thoughts about it. We get exclusive behind the scenes content from the authors. And we get to hear from them on the Happy Place podcast too. It's beautiful. So this month, Want by Gillian Anderson. This woman really needs no introduction. She's been on our TV screens playing everyone from Agent Scully in The X-Files to sex therapist Jean Milburn in sex education for years.

3:18And it's Jean who's led her down an incredible new path of getting us to talk more openly about sex and desire. In Want, Gillian introduces anonymous fantasies submitted by women of all ages, of all sexualities, from all over the world. and oh my gosh, they are filled with intimacy, fear, passion, shame, actually a lot of shame and a hell of a lot of liberation. If you're a smoker or vaper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zinn Nicotine Pouches, you'll discover many good reasons. Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.

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6:16Hello, Gillian. Hello, Fern. How are you? I'm all right, actually. A bit tired since you're asking, but I'm all right. I like your honesty. I mean, you've been extremely busy. You had a book event last night. You've been promoting your beautiful pink book. Your perfect pink book. Sounds rude even just saying that. Want, which I just loved reading. Thank you. It's exceptional. It's a gorgeous collection of sexual fantasies from women all over the world. From your curation of this book and the writing you've done around these fantasies, What do you think this book tells us about women today? Gosh, it tells us so much.

7:00So the book is women's fantasies sent to me in the cloak of anonymity. And there's something I think very interesting about the freedom that anonymity enabled the women to write with because they are very, very honest, very detailed, raw, sexy. They're so sexy. They are sad. Some are sad, very moving. There's a lot more tenderness than I would have expected somehow. That may be just me. Women wanting to be seen for who they actually are, not necessarily. Very often, I think, when you read fantasies, women talk about the idealized version of themselves, that they're not necessarily themselves. There's a lot of women who talk about wanting the person that they're having sex with, their partner, to see them for exactly who they are for the body that they have.

8:02And that that is what they want. That's what's being desired. There's a lot more shame than I would have expected for 2024. and to me I was surprised how challenging women still find the topic of sex fantasy and pleasure in discussing with sexual partners yeah um how difficult they still find it to ask for what they want in the bedroom which I have to imagine equates to asking for what one wants in life even though it's more taboo to you know there's certain you know getting to a place where you feel confident to ask for your sexual needs to be met I you know there's a there's a real power that happens in the alchemy of that assertion and I I do wonder whether if we felt freer to to assert ourselves in that private, intimate way, whether it would be easier to ask for what we want and we need in our everyday lives.

9:16And I guess that's still predominantly a female issue because the interesting thing is we can compare it to another book that you read when you were researching for your character, Dr. Jean Milburn, for sex education, Nancy Friday's book My Secret Garden which was a collation of sexual fantasies from women in 1973 so 51 years ago do you think the progression that you perhaps see with the fantasies today compared to the ones back 51 years ago do you think there is more liberation? Do you think there is more freedom? Or are we kind of stuck in a bit of a rut as females not being able to ask what we want still feeling this shame and guilt around sex?

10:00Well, I think what I was surprised by both in Nancy Friday's book was, on the one hand, she asked a very small group of people. There were quite a few letters, but they were friends and colleagues. And it was important for us in this book that it was as international and as diverse and inclusive as possible. So that obviously is also going to have an impact on the degree to which women feel safe and able to share their fantasies. but I was also surprised in reading her book how explicit some of the fantasies were back then. I would have assumed that women were much more, I'm going to use a pejorative term, much more uptight and prudish about their fantasies and in fact there are some in there that feel as extreme, if not more extreme than some that we have.

10:58but I would have expected to see evidence of porn more at least you know I would have thought that because of the multi-billion dollar industry that it is that it would have shown up more but on the other hand the porn industry is very much geared towards the male gaze and for men and so is sex education in terms of how perfunctory and almost technical it is. It's not really about pleasure. So the fact that here is a book, the book belongs to the women who wrote the letters. It's not really my book. It's all of the women who wrote in and feels very much like the women who are reading it are also taking ownership of it.

11:40But it is a lot about pleasure and it's pleasure itself that we don't often talk about. Pleasure is not spoken about in our sex education. It doesn't seem to be spoken about that much in couples in terms of what one might want or desire that might give them more pleasure. And that's a bit that interests me the most. I'm most interested in the ways in which we as women, you know, continue to shy away from or be afraid to speak up and kind of step into whatever power might be available to us because of preconceived ideas about what's OK or what's expected of them. and so I've you know been enjoying speaking in that space you know talking about that element of what this book is about pleasure is such an interesting one because I guess there's just so many different sides to that conversation when it comes to women like some of it might be we don't believe we deserve it we haven't been told that it's even an option yeah and I think that counts for when we're talking about sex but also outside of sex we're just like we deprive ourselves constantly we don't think we're deserving or we think that it's very very far down the list of priorities and maybe also like you say all the things that you've listed whether it's porn and how that's you know through the male lens um or just the lack of equality that we still see in the world in terms of sort of power distribution and who's ruling the world that women still don't feel they can exercise their right to say i'd quite like to enjoy this please it's very much It's trivialized.

13:23Pleasure is trivialized or something that is, you know, as much a dirty word as anything else. When actually when you lean into pleasure, whether it's pleasure around sex or pleasure in other areas of our lives, there's so much joy that can come from experiencing that or, you know, embracing it, encouraging it in our lives, our conversation and everything. But, you know, it's very interesting, all those points that you bring up just in terms of where it sits in terms of what we've. I mean, I've been asked many times during interviews for this. What about a book for men? And obviously, you know, immediate reaction is, well, you know, they've had a voice for centuries.

14:08And, you know, but it occurs to me the degree to which, even though on the one hand, we all slightly buy into the idea that it's for the male lens, sex and pornography, etc. You know, if we were to have a book for men asking them to write in anonymously about their fantasies, would there be as much, you know, could there be, is it possible that there is a need also to be seen, a need for tenderness, a need to not actually act out the types of fantasy we would expect for men to want to engage in? that would we be as surprised as we are by some of the requests and needs that women have. It's just that we accept it.

14:53We're so used to accepting something that's been handed down in a patriarchal society to expect that maybe none of us want that, actually. Maybe none of us. We're just kind of caught in this loop of the way it's always been and the way it's always going to be until we start doing it differently. God, as you're saying that, I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this out loud, but I always think, fuck it. Thinking about a version of this with men's fantasies makes me feel a bit scared and a bit like creeped out and a bit like I wouldn't. Whereas this, I really loved reading it and I felt such empathy and connection with the majority of the stories or certainly had some kind of understanding as to why that person might be thinking in that way.

15:41It's really weird, like the different tone that that feels bespoke to me, I guess, that a male version of this would make me feel a bit panicked, I think. Yeah, interesting. I don't think you're alone in that. But, I mean, that could be for so many reasons. I don't know what, you know, I'm not a psychiatrist, first of all. I'm not a psychologist or a sex therapist. I don't know what your history is. I'm not either. I just like chatting. But, you know, the degree to which there's been so much harm in that area. And, I mean, it's probably better that we're not, you know, traipse too far down that avenue.

16:19But I agree with you in terms of how easy this is to read, how much compassion one feels in the process, how delightful some of the stories are, what fantastic writing there is in here, how honest, brutally honest women have been. And it's incredibly inviting. I've had numerous men desperate to read it, not necessarily to be turned on, but just to learn, to understand. men wanting to gift it to their daughters, wanting to present it almost as an antidote to, you know, so much of what's out there that is through the male lens or inviting toxic masculinity as opposed to there's so much, I don't know, there's so much.

17:07I keep thinking of the word tenderness. But there's also, you know, it's pretty raunchy. There's, you know, yeah, it is. It's pretty raunchy. Constantly surprising. Yeah. You know, there was points where I thought, well, I won't be shocked from this point on. And then I was still like, oh, I'd never even... But I love the extent of people's imagination. It's incredible. People are so creative. Yeah, so creative. I mean, that's something... I know it's ridiculous, but I never... Until I started working on this, I'd never actually thought of fantasy as a creative act. And I started to imagine all these women in various, you know, ends of the earth who may not, whose normal lives, everyday lives may not equate to much that is outwardly creative.

17:53You know, they may not be artists or they may not be, you know, and the majority of their creativity might come out in, you know, in a meal or drawing with their kids or whatever that it's not. But the opportunity to lean into and embrace the creative aspects of themselves in order to, you know, start asking oneself one's question, allow the fantasies to live and breathe and be okay to go in any direction one wants. I just love the idea that somehow we're, you know, through women from some parts of the world being so honest and how that might encourage other women to properly explore in a creative way the different avenues that their minds go, but also in how that potentially could open them up to bigger conversations, conversations, you know, obviously, as we've talked about, asking for things that maybe they didn't even realise they wanted.

18:52But the interesting thing is, a lot of the time, you don't actually want your fantasy to come true. I realised reading this, there is a huge divide between fantasy and actual desire. And I don't think I'd ever given that a thought before reading this book. There are many circumstances, and definitely with my own sexual fantasies, where it's something that can really get the juices going and get you feeling great, but you would never want it to happen in real life. And that, to me, is fascinating. I wonder how much you believe these fantasies tell us about the individual, bearing that in mind, because sometimes they're so out of this world, so unrelated to real life that actually do they say anything at all about who we are as people?

19:40I think that's a very good question. And I don't know the answer to that. I don't know where, for instance, the alien tentacle fantasy comes from and what that has to do with the childhood of the woman who knows. You know, who knows? And, you know, clearly, and some women are very frank about this, you know, some of the fantasies are related in some way to trauma that they've experienced. in childhood or, you know, I know people that I've spoke to whose consistent fantasy is related to the very first time they had sex and the horror that was, you know, was created in all the fumbling and etc. And that, you know, and that continues to be an element of how the fantasy plays out, you know.

20:23And again, I'm not a therapist, but I can't help but be curious about those things and want to ask those questions. But I think what this does, what the book does, is it starts the conversation, starts people asking themselves what it is, not only what are their fantasies. If I were to have a fantasy, what would it be? Is that something, do I actually want that to happen? Is there any element of that, that I would actually want that to happen? Is that what actually happens in my set? Oh, I've never thought about that. So my fantasy is about, you know, having sex with 15 people all doing this particular thing to me.

21:02Do I even have that experience of one person doing that to me? Well, maybe I should try and find somebody who will do that to me. I don't know what it is. But it's so interesting. It is. It says so much about. I think we get, you know, there's a lot of, I think we can find out a lot about ourselves. And also potentially if you're open to having conversation with your partner, a lot about your partner. Yeah, that's an interesting one, isn't it? if it becomes something that isn't so private. Because I guess the tantalising nature of sexual fantasies is that they're so secret, they're so private.

21:39And you've obviously submitted your own anonymous fantasy within the pages of this book. Did you find or do you think the other contributors will have found that their fantasy is slightly diluted from just even putting pen to paper, fingers to laptop? or has it still got that amazing titillating nature even though you've written it down? That's a very good question. I have to say from my own experience, nothing has changed since I wrote it down. I did find it hard to write down. Why? I was surprised. I assumed because I find it so easy to talk about and I mean not specifically my fantasy but sex in general and I feel like I can hear and discuss anything and not be swayed.

22:30And so, one, I put it off for a long time. And then once I started, there were certain words that I struggled to write, which was so weird to me. I was actually, like, I was shocked. I was shocked at myself. And what was the feeling, like embarrassment? No, it wasn't. And somehow it felt, when trying to describe things, that normally it's just an imagery. It's actually putting a word to something and then the word equating to what other word is there than that for me to use it because that word, I don't like that word. That word feels it's dirty or it takes something away from there or it's not right.

23:19It almost felt like I was writing smut rather than my... Big Jenny Keenper. Yeah, yeah. Which I didn't want to be doing. I wanted it to be, you know, so it was really interesting. Yeah. Fascinating. You also say in the book, there's something terrifying about being knowable. And I absolutely understand that. I mean, I think I weirdly oscillate between wanting people to desperately understand who I am at the core of me, even though I don't know half the time, to, oh, my God, I don't want anyone to know what's really going on inside my head. What is that fear for you? Why do you not want to be knowable or a part of you not want to be knowable?

24:05um i mean i'm sure as somebody in the public eye and as yourself um but certainly times in my particularly younger life living in la or or earlier living in in the uk and having you know pups outside the door or following and trying to take pictures of me and my kids or whatever and also certain intrusiveness over time where i would completely shut down from you know innocent interviews because I felt for a while that I couldn't trust anybody. So I know that there's an element of that always. I definitely feel like I am more open and enjoy the process of talking more than I used to. I didn't realize this would be such a challenge in working on the introductions, but I like telling the truth.

25:01I'm quite literal. And if you ask me a question that I shouldn't answer, I find that really hard to like be political and to steer it. I just want to, as I said, I was working with a media, what if you call it, a coach, you know, for the first time really, just, you know, before this book, because I have a tendency to drive towards the elephant. I kept saying, if you tell me not to drive towards an elephant, I'm going to fucking drive towards an elephant. And that's just the way I operate. Which is refreshing. I love that. So if I'm asked, if somebody else is talking about something personal, I'm going to want to talk about my own experience of personal.

25:49I'm going to want to talk about people that I know. I know this person who said, you know, polyamory, blah, blah, blah, blah. can't go there okay so to what to not end up as a daily daily mail headline how can i talk about this in a way that feels like i'm giving something of myself and properly considering it and at the same time one step removed so the way into that for me was you know talking about characters that I've played and which is what I do majoritively in the introductions and and I think that answers your question but yes that is one of the ways that so I felt like I was still able to stay in it and be honest but it's not necessarily talking about my own experience or proclivities or what have you it's getting harder and harder in this industry to walk that line you know if we'd been having this chat 20 years ago yes there may have been a couple of headlines in newspapers and then it would have been chip paper whereas now things live on and on online and become sensationalized and and you know they're reduced down to something that's completely meaningless but sounds really provocative so it's a tricky one and also within your job you know you are you know laying yourself bare on screen in your characters that's all part of being an actor is showing the bare bones of who you are obviously via a character but that's why that's what makes you a good actor is that we can see that there's a part of you in there somewhere so i think it's just a really strange fine line to walk it's a tricky one yeah the market's uncertain revenues tied and hiring on hold that's why results driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving.

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29:43So let's talk about some of your characters. As you say, you know, they are mentioned in the book several times and in really interesting ways. I'm really keen to know more about when you were playing Stella Gibson in The Fool. You've said that that particular character really boosted your sexual confidence. Why and how do you think that happened? Well, she was, you know, she herself as a character was incredibly confident, wore particular kinds of clothes that was very particular about her style and her sense of dress. But for some reason, it felt clear that her sense of dress was very much for herself, you know, so that she felt good in her clothes.

30:28You could tell she felt sensuous. She was a sexual being that comes out in the series. She asks for what she wants sexually from both men and women. And she was also obviously incredibly intelligent and the top of her field and all of that was incredibly appealing and sexy. And yet at the same time, she was enigmatic and slightly unknowable. And I have a, most of the time, I am an introvert. I am pretty much just on set or with my kids or my partner and I've had a slightly challenged relationship with publicity and public life and social life and everything. I'd much rather be in a dark room with the blinds down.

31:19And so, you know, going from what would be my hotel room after work every day, my preferred place preparing for the next day's work in my, you know, biker boots and my black jeans and whatever, and then showing up and stepping into the shoes of this very confident, elegant, very self-aware, powerful. woman it was such a shift I think it was such a it it felt so different from how I feel on a daily basis where sometimes I pick up and wear the same clothes every day for the school run or whatever and I just don't really pay that much attention to it if I'm not going to be you know you know seen in public on the street or whatever it's just it's for convenience um You know, and so the relationship between clothes and self and enjoyment and opening kind of happened in a way by stepping into her shoes, experiencing her for that period of time over those years.

32:30And in that, I think it also awakened in me a kind of a stirring in my own sense of my sexual self and sensual self that I don't know whether I had always been asleep or whether it was awake when I was younger and then was asleep. I don't know, but it felt it felt very felt slightly profound. And so that was and so then when I started doing press for that series, you know, some of that was a conversation that kept coming up because people would constantly comment on her shirts and and and particularly her sexuality and how she manifested that. And so it became a topic that I didn't normally speak to.

33:21So I guess on some level, that kind of was the beginning of me taking ownership of where it sat for me in my life. I find it so interesting. You know, does that make you think having that sort of profound change in terms of, you know, feeling more sexually confident or whatever it was was sort of stirring inside of you, that all of us perhaps have the propensity to fake it till we make it. that we can, you know, when you're acting, you are pretending to feel things. And then, and then you're at the other end of that going, oh, and now I actually feel it. You know, do you think we've all got the propensity to do that?

34:05Well, it's interesting you ask, because that's actually something that I have been starting to talk about in the last year, mostly around, I came out with this drinks brand called G-Spot. And obviously the name is, you know, somewhat related to persona that I took on in doing sex education. But in the process of starting to talk about brand marketing, the brand house that we were working with, the business that we had hired to help us with branding would ask very basic questions, you know, about what the brand is, who your audience is, which then leads down to who your fan base is. what's the demographic and what's the messaging that you're that you're wanting to put out there like which I'd never thought about before in my life or even talking about brands just was never part of um of my life at all and in starting to have that conversation and really do a deep dive into well hang on a second what is it about to me it's always been the characters right not necessarily me.

35:16Yes, I know that, you know, women are encouraged by the fact that I do a lot of charity work and I'm an activist and et cetera. And the fact that I play, you know, the very strong women, et cetera. But what is it in the characters that women are responding to that make them want to, you know, either follow me or come back for more or what's the next thing I do or what is it? What is it about Stella Gibson that makes people create a bumper sticker that says, what would Stella do? Right. So there's something, whether it's Scully and the Scully effect or whether it's Stella or whether it's Jean Milburn, what is it about them?

36:03And yes, maybe the combination with me and what are the things that I talk about that makes them feel powerful, feel like they want to do what I do or be, you know, to be empowered by these characters. And the fact is, even though I show up as Stella, I'm not her. I am, as I've said, I have come as a different person, presented as a different person to work, to put on her clothes and act as if I am that intelligent, that sexy, that confident, that sensual in my club, blah, blah, blah. And the same with Jean in terms of who she is and how connected to her sexuality and how promiscuous and free she is with her, you know, and showing up in a negligee to the front door.

37:06You know, that is not me. And so, and also the fact that so much of my career as an actor, whether it's starting from Scully in my 20s, where suddenly I was in this number one show playing this character who consistently was called on in scenes to be the smartest in the room, the one who was telling other FBI agents what to do, who was yelling at her, the director of the FBI, who was, you know, engaged in debate with Mulder about, you know, science and medicine and aliens and this, that and the other, and have really in-depth conversations about things that I knew absolutely fuck all about. You know, that, to show up and believe that I could do those things, that I had it somewhere in me to look that smart, to be that powerful, to be that confident, to walk that way.

38:11Most of the time when I show up to work, particularly at the beginning of a job, I think I'm going to be fired. Do you really? Yeah, every single job, first two days, hell. Literally think that I'm going to be fired and that the producers huddling around the monitor, I'm literally going, oh, my God, what have we done? Why have we heard that? I love this. You do know that you're, like, one of the biggest actors on the planet. I'm just putting that out there. But that's kind of the point, which is that, you know, none of us are immune to the fear and the anxiety. And, yes, I'm an actor, but at the end of the day, I also, when I'm standing as a 27-year-old in front of 25 male FBI agents and I'm telling them, you know, what they need to do next and where they need to go and being the boss of them.

39:01I couldn't fucking believe it. Like all I heard was my squeaky, squeaky voice, you know, my 27, I was actually 24 and I lied, but my little, my tiny voice basically, that's what I hear. Right. And so that's the point is that if I can do that and continue to do that and act as if I am this confident person and go up on stage having panic attacks and blah, blah, blah. If I can do those things, then, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, fucking anybody can. And you've hit the nail on the head. It took me 20 minutes to answer that question, but yes. It's a big one. It's a bloody big one. And we need to hear it because actually confidence plays into this so hugely and that's why I think I felt probably a bit sad but also deeply empathetic to many of these fantasies and probably when I think about my own is that most women lack confidence in some area of life and probably most do or have at some point sexually have felt not enough have felt not sexy enough like their body looks weird there's something they can't stop thinking about that stops them from reaching that place of pleasure.

40:18And actually fantasy allows us to get out of that and to imagine yourself completely inhibition free, just being able to do whatever you want, say whatever you want. You can change who you are in your fantasy. So it's actually this perfect little bubble of escapism, which is really needed for women. And also we haven't even gotten to the orgasm gap, which is this other huge thing that relates to that subject matter where we know that so many well I don't know what the percentages are I can't remember now but a disproportionate amount of women are not having an orgasm during sex at all whereas and are more likely to go off and and take care of themselves either not then or at another time you know that rather than then interrupt or waste the time of their partner or maybe that fear that it might take too long to get there and they don't want to they don't want to inconvenience or they don't even want to ask don't even want to ask yeah yeah it's I mean it's definitely the ask thing yeah there's maybe a bit I don't know this is just we've both made it very clear we're not psychologists but when I was thinking about this earlier part of me was like is part of this because men's sexual organs are all hanging outside of them and ours are all inside and it's a bit more complicated for us to kind of feel those feelings also what's going on in our minds we might tend to overthink things more i'm probably generalizing here but i think maybe a big mixing pot of all of this stuff is stopping women from really enjoying sex and that is a problem i also think that women you know very much are more self-conscious about their physicality than men are without a doubt yeah so if you get naked you know it's it's possible and i think quite it's probable that women will be more conscious about how their body looks to the other person than the man will be.

42:15And we're just obviously talking about heteronormative sex. And also just in terms of the amount of men who, you know, just have an assumption, no matter how they look naked, they are attracted to the women who are perfect. Right. It's so true. It's kind of extraordinary. and don't even consider that they might be judged or that there might be. I find that absolutely fascinating. But aside from all of that, the degree to which women just in general forget being naked, but the degree to which self-esteem and lack of self-esteem is such an epidemic currently and has been for some time and it's just getting worse and worse, as we know, particularly from social media, et cetera.

43:04I mean, all of this is part of a much needed conversation, you know, to create a platform to really investigate and dig down into why that might be and try and blast through some of that. Yes, we might want to, and it might be necessary to, and it might be more sexy to keep one's fantasies to oneself. But in the process of having this conversation, reading other women's experiences and deepest inner thoughts, it's hard to read this without thinking, what would my fantasy be? And relate it to the sex that one is actually having or not having. And also start to think about what one actually wants.

43:49actually hang on a second what do I want? I don't think many of us know no we haven't got a clue it's so far down the list of things that we feel like we've got to prioritise we just haven't got a bloody clue so how fun actually for people even listening to this now to go away, have a think about it and write it down what a lovely exercise fantastic first step even if you don't show I mean, you probably would choose not to share it with anybody, but share it down just for yourself. You know, I think it's a really, really fantastic and healthy exercise to do that. It is. I think also, I mean, not only having conversations like this in public, which I think are deeply necessary, but I think personally just going away and writing that down does somewhat shred the shame.

44:41because, again, I felt sad reading some of these fantasies where there was one woman who said in her submission that she felt disgusted with herself. And I don't think that's... She's not the anomaly. I'm sure there are so many, countless women who feel deeply, like, drowning in shame and self-disgust and total embarrassment about what their either fantasies or desires are. and that feels jarring considering I mean we've still got a long way to go in terms of like just gender equality yeah again when we're talking about men and women at the moment but it feels like like that's that's just not progressive that we're still feeling like that that we're still so full of shame it's really sad well it's sad but it's also perpetuated today even more than it ever has been because of social media, because of trolling, because, you know, anybody, including computers, can be programmed to troll and to just spit out abuse and judgment and hate.

45:49And so that's obviously not going to stop anytime soon. And so, you know, so much of the work, unfortunately, does need to happen, you know, from the inside out, but also in the community of women in terms of having a platform to be able to talk about this stuff so that it is outside of us instead of inside of us so that we can, I mean, there's so many things to identify with there. The women in the process of writing in this book felt, even though they are anonymous, felt seen and heard just by participating in this process. And certainly from what I'm hearing, women who are reading it feel seen.

46:37And so if in some small part, this is the beginning of a conversation, I mean, obviously these conversations have been had at other times and instigated by other people, But if it continues the conversation about that in a community environment of non-judgment and inclusivity, you know, the call out to women, just to remind you, was, you know, not just traditional women, but anyone who identifies as women, including the trans community, anyone, the LGBTQ plus community and non-binary people. So we wanted it to be as inclusive as possible. And I feel like it's a good cross-section of that. There's a very good range.

47:19And so I feel like on the one hand, there is pretty much something for everybody in there. And at the very least, it feels like it's the start of an important conversation. Oh, my God, without a doubt. I think like any topic, just talking about it or listening to other people have a conversation about something that you feel nervous to talk about, nervous to even think about, is the first step in just feeling okay about it. And actually, I think a lot of the time we feel, we just go, oh, it's just me that thinks this, and I'm a freak, and this is so weird, whether it is talking about sex or mental health, whatever.

47:55We assume we're the only one going through these things. And actually, reading these stories, it's a sense of community just reading them. You're like, oh, my God. god this is such a healthy place to be to be able to sort of sit and listen to these stories and you know that as you said at the very very start you know there's some seriously fruity stories in here but there's some really sad stories or ones that feel very tender but also there's there's a lot of topics that come up that get you sitting there really thinking about all the societal issues that we still know are at play and that and then need to shift when nancy friday wrote her book there were there was a lot of questioning afterwards about how the fantasies might depict uh the gender roles that have been forced upon women around that time what do you think's changed there because as you just mentioned it's a really inclusive book but you still do see there's women in the book who would definitely class themselves as feminists you know I'm sure most women do saying I want to be kidnapped by a man or restrained or pinned down and they feel so conflicted about their fantasy and and everything we know about gender roles what did you feel reading those sorts of fantasies well you know on the one hand we don't know details about what those women's histories are what the you know what what degree of trauma there may or may not be in their lives um uh one of the women i think in in the book that we kept who you know fantasize about about being kidnapped is a feminist you know qualifies herself as a feminist and lives a very high powered life and is constantly in control in her life and makes all the decisions and i wonder interested in you know psychologically the degree to which the desire for that kind of supposed lack of control and potential violence is because secretly she doesn't think she deserves to be in the position that she's in and somehow that's a punishment or is it because the intensity of the kidnap and the violence equates to somehow the intensity of her job and only something that is as intense can sit properly in her fantasy life or, you know, so many questions get brought up.

50:17But the thing that I keep coming back to is, you know, I also know a lot of women who would, you know, qualify as being feminists who have proper violent fantasies, you know, to the degree that we wouldn't necessarily be able to hold in this book, because it wouldn't necessarily feel safe or appropriate. certainly not for ASOS which is one of the companies that's going to be so we want it to be as broad as possible one thing that I have to remember is that the point of fantasy as much as anything is that we are the director, we are in control of the fantasies of what we create within the confines of our minds and so because of that We dictate the violence.

51:07We dictate whether we are powerful or whether we are submissive, which are two sides of the same coin. You know, we dictate who does what to whom, when, how, for how long. And because we are in control of that agency, that's very, very different. That is its own form of consent, which is very, very different from what we talk about when we talk about other kinds of kidnapping and violence. And as we also say in the book, I think in one of my intros, I imagine that there's very few women who actually really would want any of those types of fantasies to actually come true. And that's a very, very different thing.

51:51But in the confines of the mind, we are the masters and the directors and the art directors and everything. And so even though they may be challenging to read, it's fascinating because it says so much about, I mean, all of them do, but they say so much about the woman behind the fantasy and what might be going on for them personally, emotionally. you know it really really speaks to the complexity of women's minds and you know it's not so easy to actually put us into boxes when we start to talk about all this stuff because in here you've got women who you know are very very occupied with themselves as as mothers and running the household and having children having a normal heteronormative relationship and at the same time you know fantasize about having sex with Bigfoot or I you know I may be correlating two completely different fantasies in there but or we'll sit on the train on the way to work in the morning and fantasize about being you know being being you know rubbing up against all the men that are even remotely near them even though yeah so so there's a there's a um a wide wide range and I don't think there's anything it's all surprising you know I don't think there's anything predictable that's in these pages no way yeah nothing yeah it's I mean I couldn't put it down it's oh good good good it's just it's fascinating on every level but it's also highly entertaining in the best possible way and I think should massively encourage everybody to go away and feel okay about having sexual fantasies maybe invent some new ones and get even more creative because the creativity is certainly in this book and enjoy themselves and have some fun enjoy themselves have some it's great thank you for being on the podcast thank you for having me this has been really enjoyable oh Gillian I don't even know if I've got any words because I just loved that so much I just wanted to sort of almost lock us in the studio forever so we could keep talking.

54:05I find Gillian fascinating, deeply interesting to talk to and someone that is just saying it as it is. How refreshing. Have you read Want yet? Maybe you've picked it up and flicked through the pages in the bookshop and thought that's a bit of me. It's out right now. It's our Happy Place Book Club pick for September and I would love, love, love to know what thoughts have come up for you while you've been reading it. So come and find us on Instagram at Happy Place Book Club. By the way, I also recorded a brilliant, fun book club episode live at the Happy Place Festival in Tatton Park just last week.

54:42And that episode is already out. And it's with August author Holly Gramazio. It's all about her novel, The Husbands. There are never any spoilers in our book club episode, so you can join in the conversation whether you've read the book or not. All right, back next week with someone whose relatability has gotten her over 10 million followers on Instagram. She's a gorgeous down-to-earth human. Until then, the biggest thank you to Gillian Anderson, to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Play Studios, and to you, go on, go after what you want.

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