The 'Sex Education' star explains how her new collection of essays on women's sexual needs came to be. Gillian Anderson has a new book out and it's all about what women want. Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous out Sept. In February , the Sex Education star put out a public call for anonymous letters and the result is more than raw, revealing and real stories from women around the world β including one of Anderson's own.
These personal accounts touch on a range of sexual perspectives and experiences, including consent, multiple partners, gender as well as sexual preference, bodies, locations, audiences, privacy, scenarios and more. Below, in an exclusive excerpt shared with PEOPLE, read about the book that helped the actor prepped for her role on the hit Netflix series β and how it led to Want coming into being.
My Secret Garden 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, were talking honestly about arousal, masturbation, sexual dreams and desires. In their minds, nothing was off limits. 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. The letters and interviews were astonishingly intimate and very raw. Their unfiltered and painful honesty shook me. So much has changed in our social and sexual relations in the 50 years since My Secret Garden was first published.
A chance to gather the voices of women worldwide into a new book of fantasies for a new generation. My publishers set up a portal where the letters could be sent anonymously. And we waited β¦ We had so many questions: Might women find something interesting or erotic in putting pen to paper and sharing their inner thoughts with others?
