Forbidden Flowers Read Free Page A

women.
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    As you will see, I have not so much tried to theorize on my own; I have triedinstead to organize the material my readers sent in to illustrate the answers to these questions they have raised in their own lives. I believe we live in a time when it is of paramount importance that women learn to speak unashamedly, so that we may learn from each other. I did not ask my readers for all the information they sent me, but I am very grateful that they felt it “right” to try to trace for themselves, and me, the origin of their fantasies and the context in which they appear in their lives.
    It is, of course, impossible to analyze any particular woman's fantasy without knowing her, and understanding the full meaning of why she has chosen any particular event or symbol to express her erotic excitement. But that was never my purpose. I began research for My Secret Garden in 1968 … I began to work on this book in 1973. I wanted to see if the in-tervening five years had made any significant difference in the attitudes of women toward sexual fantasies. I am pleased to say that while I would characterize the majority of fantasies in
    Garden as various strategies women had devised to handle or disarm sexual guilt, the fantasies I have collected for this book are much more characterized by pleasure and guiltless exuberance. Poets are often called the conscience of a nation; I believe our sexual fantasies are mirrors of the women we would like to become.
    I don't think anyone can read the letters in the pages that follow and not be as touched as I was, not only by the feelings expressed but by the outpouring of honesty and the unglossy portrait they give of their lives. What impresses me most is that, although I guaranteed that all contributions would be anonymous, over half the women who wrote signed their full names and gave their addresses – as contrasted to one woman in ten who signed her real name to the letters I collected for Garden five years ago.
    While I have kept my half of the agreement – all names, professions, geographical, and other too revealing biographical data have been changed – I am moved by the courage of my readers in wanting to speak to me without disguise. As one 9

    twenty-five-year-old woman wrote, “I believe that self-acceptance is the first step toward maturity. So that I can believe in myself, I want you to believe in me and what I wrote.
    And so I am signing my full name.”

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    PART ONE

    Where Do
    Sexual Fantasies
    Come From?
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    12

    CHAPTER ONE

    CHILDHOOD

    It is evident that fantasies have value in and of themselves to the fantasizers … . From the time they were little girls, women have been told “not to think about such things.” By bringing women's sexual thoughts into the open the book gives them permission to fantasize and, in so doing, increases the possibility that women thereby also derive permission to experience real life sex more fully, more easily, more rewardingly.

    – Dr. Mary Calderone
    Review of My Secret Garden
    SIECUS Report, May 1974

    In My Secret Garden , there was a chapter called, “Where Did a Nice Girl Like You Get an Idea Like That?” It put forth my feeling that many of our fantasies spring from a time long before the world is ready to acknowledge our sexuality – childhood itself. No great pioneering idea on my part, Freud's work on infantile sexuality dates from the turn of the century. More recently, the eminent authority on childhood psychology, Dr.
    Arnold Gesell, conducted a study on infant behavior. He placed a fifty-six-week-old boy in front of a mirror, naked. What the child saw of his own body excited him so much that Dr. Gesell was able to photograph him with an erect penis. If a boy barely one year old can have an erotic experience, is it surprising that little girls – usually more precocious than boys can also be said to be sexual beings almost from birth?
    And yet the idea is still unacceptable to most people. Childhood is