Gillian Anderson, Women’s Fantasies and the Freedom to Wonder
What do you make of your own fantasies? Do you enjoy them, question them, dismiss them, or wonder what someone else would think if they knew?
Gillian Anderson’s latest book, More, brings that private world into public conversation. Following her 2024 collection Want, it gathers anonymous letters from women about their sexual fantasies. Published this September, the new collection includes contributions from women aged 18 to 80, across more than 50 countries.
The idea alone raises an interesting question:
how comfortable are we with women having an imaginative life that belongs entirely to them?
We may be surrounded by sexual imagery, but talking honestly about personal desire can still feel surprisingly difficult.
The freedom to admit curiosity
There’s something valuable about making room for women to describe desire in their own words.
So much of the conversation around women and sexuality focuses on appearance:
being attractive, looking younger, keeping someone interested.
Asking what a woman herself imagines or enjoys gives her a different role in that conversation.
And those interests don’t have to fit neatly with how she presents herself in everyday life. Being sensible, responsible or reserved doesn’t rule out a playful or adventurous imagination.
Nor does someone’s age, relationship status or experience tell us what goes on in their private thoughts.
For me, that’s what makes a collection like this an interesting starting point. It invites curiosity about the individual behind the assumptions.
Does a fantasy have to mean something?
It can be tempting to treat a fantasy like a puzzle that needs solving.
Does it reveal something missing? Does it say something about your relationship? Does imagining a particular situation mean you secretly want it to happen?
There doesn’t have to be one answer.
You might find it useful to consider what appeals to you about an imagined situation. Perhaps it’s the attention, the novelty, the freedom from responsibility or the feeling of being wanted. You may discover something you’d like more of in your life.
But you’re also allowed to enjoy an idea without turning it into a project of self-analysis. You don’t have to extract a profound truth from everything that catches your imagination.
The fantasies that come up in conversation
These questions also come up in conversations and requests at Sensual Bodyworks.
A woman might be curious about receiving attention from two men, whether that includes her partner or not. Another might imagine being submissive or restrained, enjoying the idea of someone else taking the lead within boundaries she has chosen. Others describe wanting to let out their “inner slut”, their own words for a side of themselves that feels more uninhibited, eager or sexually confident than they usually allow themselves to be.
That last phrase won’t appeal to everyone. But when a woman chooses it for herself, it can be a playful way of expressing a wish to enjoy her sexuality without embarrassment or the fear of being judged.
I think it’s important to leave room for each woman to explain what appeals to her, rather than assume the fantasy tells us everything. Being the focus of two men’s attention might be about feeling desired, shared pleasure, novelty or something else entirely. Being restrained might appeal because of the anticipation, the sense of surrender, or the opportunity to stop directing everything for a while.
Sometimes these conversations are about an experience someone would genuinely like to arrange. Sometimes they’re an opportunity to acknowledge a curiosity and ask questions. There’s room for both, and expressing an interest should never be treated as a commitment.
When a partner raises the idea, there’s another distinction worth making. I often hear from men wanting to arrange something they think, or tell me, their partner would enjoy. Sometimes it becomes clear that the suggestion is driven more by his fantasy than hers. There’s nothing wrong with him having that fantasy, and she may share it, but those are separate things. That’s why I need to hear from the woman herself, in her own words, about what appeals to her and whether she wants the experience at all.
You don’t have to make it happen
An imagined experience and a real one are different things.
In imagination, you control the details. The people, the atmosphere and the way things unfold can be exactly as you want them. Real experiences involve other people, their wishes and boundaries, and practical realities that don’t feature in the imagined version.
Sometimes a fantasy is at its most powerful when it remains a fantasy. Just talking about it with a willing partner, sharing what appeals to you or imagining a situation together can be exciting in itself. It doesn’t need to become a plan.
Making a fantasy real can be enjoyable, but it can also disappoint. Something that feels compelling in your imagination may feel awkward, underwhelming or simply different in practice. Sometimes that experience can take the shine off the fantasy itself, making it harder to enjoy in the same way afterwards.
That doesn’t mean you should never explore. It’s simply worth asking whether you want the actual experience, with all its uncertainties, or whether you most enjoy the imagined version.
If you do decide to explore, that is a separate choice, requiring its own conversation and agreement. Having described a fantasy doesn’t commit you to trying it, and it doesn’t give anyone permission to arrange it for you.
A fantasy can be a source of pleasure for years without ever needing to happen.
Should you tell your partner?
Sharing a fantasy can be an invitation to a conversation, but there’s no obligation to disclose every private thought.
If you do want to share, it helps to explain what you’re sharing it for. Are you simply letting someone know you better? Would you enjoy talking about the idea together? Or is there something you might actually like to discuss trying?
Those are different conversations.
A simple opening might be: “There’s something I enjoy imagining. I’m not asking us to do it, but would you be comfortable talking about it?”
The person listening also gets to have their own response. They can be curious without sharing the interest, and they can appreciate your honesty without agreeing to take part.
What matters is making room for both people to speak freely, without ridicule or pressure.
There’s no requirement to be adventurous
A conversation about openness can accidentally create another expectation: that everyone should have elaborate fantasies, want to experiment or constantly push their boundaries.
You don’t need to compete with someone else’s imagination.
You might enjoy familiar experiences, have very few fantasies, or feel little interest in reading about other people’s. None of that needs correcting. The freedom to acknowledge what you want includes the freedom to be content with it.
Fifty years on, how much has changed?
There is an earlier book worth exploring, too. Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies, first published in 1973, brought women’s private fantasies into public view. Gillian Anderson read it while preparing to play Jean Milburn in Sex Education, and it later inspired her own collections.
More than fifty years later, we might expect a seemingly more sexually liberated society to have left much of the guilt and embarrassment behind. Yet Anderson’s reflections suggest that being surrounded by conversations about sex is not the same as feeling comfortable with our own desires. A woman can know that fantasies are common and still wonder whether hers make her strange, disloyal or somehow wrong.
Perhaps that is the lasting value of these books:
the chance to recognise something of yourself in another woman’s words
or simply to appreciate how differently people experience desire.
Reading them need not lead to an experiment or even a conversation. Sometimes it is enough to feel less alone, and to know that a fantasy can remain yours to enjoy, without any obligation to make it real.
Something to read, and perhaps talk about
If the subject interests you, Anderson’s More offers a timely reason to explore the conversation, whether privately or with a partner.
What interests me most is the opportunity to approach desire with a little less judgement. We can be curious about a thought without being alarmed by it, discuss an idea without promising to act on it, and recognise that other people’s interests don’t have to match our own.
Perhaps the useful starting question is simply:
“Can I allow myself to wonder?”
