WOMEN ON TOP
HOW REAL LIFE
HAS CHANGED
WOMEN'S SEXUAL
FANTASIES
Nancy Friday
© Nancy Friday 1991
The right of Nancy Friday to be
identified as Author of this work has been asserted
by Nancy Friday in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved
This edition first published in 1991 by
Hutchinson
Reprinted 1992
Random Century Group Ltd
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA
Random Century Australia (Pty) Ltd
20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney, NSW 2061, Australia
Random Century New Zealand Ltd
PO Box 40-086, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Random Century South Africa (Pty) Ltd
PO Box 337, Bergvlei, 2012, South Africa
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Friday, Nancy
Women on top: Women's sexual fantasies.
I. Title
306.7082
ISBN 0-09-175308-2 (cased)
ISBN 0-09-175338-4 (paperback)
Photoset by Speedset Ltd, Ellesmere Port
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC
Contents
PART ONE: REPORT FROM THE EROTIC INTERIOR... 1
PART TWO: SEPARATING SEX AND LOVE:
IN PRAISE OF MASTURBATION................. 17
A Little History ...............................................23
What We Win From Masturbation...................26
The Mother/Daughter Deal..............................28
Masturbation Helps Men Separate
Love And Sex...............................................32
The Nice Girl Rules.........................................34
The Swept Away Phenomenon.........................36
How Much Have We Really Changed? ............43
The Cloaca Concept ........................................44
What Is A Real Woman?.................................45
PART THREE: THE FANTASIES ............................................ 48
A Word About The Women And Their
Fantasies ......................................................50
Chapter One: Seductive, Sometimes Sadistic, Sexually
Controlling Women....................................53
The Great Seductress: The Power Of The
Pleasure Giver ..............................................53
Good Mother/Good Orgasm ............................87
"All I Want Is To Control Everything" ..........101
Angry Women/Sadistic Fantasies...................127
"Look At Me!" The Power Of
The Exhibitionist ........................................161
Chapter Two: W omen With Women....................................185
"Only Another Woman Knows".....................185
"Am I Gay?".................................................224
The Other Woman As Mirror ........................252
Chapter Three: Insatiable Women: The Cry for More............277
The Thrill Of The Forbidden .........................278
Women With Bigger Appetites
Than Their Men..........................................295
One Woman, Many Fantasies ........................326
"More Oral, Please!".....................................336
Taking It All In .............................................375
Groups..........................................................397
Watching Two Men Have Sex .......................411
If I Had A Penis ............................................427
Without this playing with
Fantasy no creative work has
ever yet come to birth. The
debt we owe to the play of
imagination is incalculable.
Carl Gustav Jung
Psychological Types, 1923
For Mary of Lexington
Kentucky and for my
darling Norman
Part One
Report From The
Erotic Interior

t's an odd time to be writing about sex. Not at all like the late 1960s
and 1970s, when the air was charged with sexual curiosity, women's
lives were changing at the rate of a geometric progression, and the exploration
of women's sexuality - well, it ranked right up there with economic
equality.
Today's sexual climate is somber. Gone are the lively debates and writings
about sex as part of our humanity. The toll of AIDS, reports from the
abortion battlefield, and the alarming rise of unintended pregnancies make
sex seem more risky than joyful.
By their sheer numbers young men and women twenty years ago made
sex a burning issue; later when the time came to go on to more "serious"
business, they put the sexual revolution to bed. Implicit in the prim set of
their lips today is that they overdid it twenty years ago; like good Calvinist
children the Establishment now punishes itself for its former naughty excesses
and righteously turns its back on sex. Because they are still the majority
who make the rules and write the headlines, they assume they speak