Question 1:
What inspired you to become vocal about female sexuality -- a specific event, a general frustration, a philosophical imperative, a sexual desire . . . ?
|
Question 1: What inspired you to become vocal about female sexuality -- a specific event, a general frustration, a philosophical imperative, a sexual desire . . . ? |
 | |
 I was always The Nicest Girl on the block: the President of my class, the head of Student Government, the A student. But that Nice Girl business warred like hell with High Curiosity about sex, though of course I didn't call it sex. I didn't call it anything, didn't have a name for it, didn't have full sexual penetration until I was twenty-one. But I had everything else. I was a hard-core addict to being held in a boy/man's arms, kissed, driven to madness, close to loss of consciousness, otherwise known as orgasm, though I didn't call it that. All I knew was that I couldn't get enough of it and that my secret vice separated me from all the other Nice Girls who wanted to get married and have children. I wanted to meet many men, in whose arms, more than any other place, I felt I could discover who I was. And I wanted Bad Men, not brutes, nothing like that, but men who were as addicted to the sexual high as I. Lucky for me, it was the late '60s and my kind of girl was in style, which is how I came to write about sex, and how my theme came to be the story of my own life, Good Girl Vs. Bad Girl. Timing is everything in life. In the early '70s we women were an undiscovered continent and the publishing world was hot to sign up every woman who might enlighten the world as to how women thought and felt, especially in an erotic context. Well, I'd never read anything on the subject of women's sexual fantasies and since my own were the core of my identity, and the world was now a warm and friendly place in which to expose my secret self, I wrote an outline, along with a few fantasies and submitted them to an editor who said he couldn't wait to see the material. The envelope was returned within hours, a round-robin that would be repeated with three or four more editors. Initially, they'd love the idea, verbally outlined, but when the pages were in their hand, they clearly aroused anxiety. Eventually My Secret Garden found a publisher and I found myself faced with press and television interviewers: Why had I written such a book? they worriedly asked, trying to put the Nice Girl appearance together with the forbidden material. Certainly I own a high degree of exhibitionism, I would say today. After all, a Nice Girl doesn't write for publication about her fantasies of being fucked in near public places. My exhibitionism is in the service of explaining me to myself, of merging Good and Bad Girl into one. Writing about sex gave me the chance to be myself for the first time in my life. This is who I am. 
- Sallie's response to Nancy |
Question 1 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 2 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 3 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 4 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 5 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 6 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale |
|
|