I was barely five years old in 1973 when the cult classic , compiled by Nancy Friday, made its way onto the bookshelves and into the handbags of women in the US. was proof that women enjoyed as rich and diverse an erotic inner life as men. Finally, here was a book in which ordinary women, young and old – “you, me and our next-door neighbour” – were talking honestly about arousal, masturbation, sexual dreams and desires.
In their minds, nothing was off limits. What Friday’s book revealed was 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. Unconstrained by assumed social conventions, self-consciousness or perhaps the fear of making our partners uncomfortable, in our imaginations we can indulge in our deepest, most transgressive desires.
It was provocative, even revolutionary, at the start, and then it became required reading, a multimillion-copy global bestseller. I don’t know if my computer analyst mother owned a copy of Friday’s book. Ours certainly wasn’t a puritanical household where such reading matter would have been frowned on.
But as liberal as my childhood was, it wouldn’t have been something that Mom left lying about on the coffee table. When I was a teenager, I once found a copy of , the infamous French erotic novel by Anne Desclos, tucked behind a sofa cushion in our neighbours’ house and I definitely turned a few pages. And as a much younger child, I r.