Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous

by Gillian Anderson

As a society, we habitually put women into boxes, limiting and constraining their identities and roles – the enticing sexual partner, the caring mother, the smart career woman – and yet what these fantasies demonstrate is that no woman has one sole identity.

Fantasy is a safe space; it is not necessarily what we wish was real. Crucially, in a fantasy we don’t need anyone’s permission other than our own: a fantasy is a deliberate, and usually entirely private, act of both memory and imagination.

Interestingly, many of the letters that detail dreams of being dominated and ceding control come from women who describe careers that come with great responsibility and power, as well as being largely responsible for keeping the house and family life on track.

I’m honest, I think there are two sides to me, as perhaps there are to many women: the side that is good at asking for what I want and the side that will concede to my partner’s desires, that is happy to share my innermost urges but only if my partner starts the conversation (and then not all of them). Is that due to shame? Or an indication that I wouldn’t trust anyone with that level of intimacy? Or is it that I think it’s somehow better to be, in part, unknowable? Do we all, in some way, struggle with being totally knowable?

I don’t want to be objectified and yet I want to be desired. Maybe I’m just attracted to contradiction.

Simply put, sexual attraction and libido are different things – you can be horny without it being directed at anyone in particular.

‘I want to be an object instead of a woman. I long to exist in this primal state. To escape from the never-ending mental load.’

For women whose days revolve around other people, it’s rare to feel like you are the star of your own show – noticed, admired, loved, desired. For them – for us – the fantasy of being put back into the centre of our own story is viscerally potent.