Gillian Anderson, who rose to fame as The X-Files' Agent Dana Scully, is asking women to anonymously tell her their sexual fantasies. These days Anderson plays a sex therapist on the Netflix series Sex Education.
"I'm launching a major exploration of women and sex – and I want to hear from YOU," Anderson said in the Instagram video below. "Help us to create a revolutionary book for now and for future generations by writing me a letter starting with, Dear Gillian."
"Wherever you come from, whether you're 18 or 80, you sleep with men or women or non-binary individuals or all or no one at all, I want to know your most personal desires," she said.
In an essay in The Guardian, she writes about taking inspiration of Nancy Friday's 1973 breakthrough book My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies:
I want women across the world, and all of you who identify intrinsically as women now – queer, heterosexual and bisexual, non-binary, transgender, polyamorous – all of you, old and young, whatever your religion, and married, single or other, to write to me and tell me what you think about when you think about sex. Whether it's when you're having it by yourself or with a partner, or with more than one. Tell me. Fantasies, frustrations, explorations, the forbidden, childhood, sounds, fetishes, guilt, insatiability. Fifty years on, the boundaries have been erased, no more so than in our own sexuality: BDSM, the modern meaning of gender etc, anything is up for grabs. Are women still the silent sex? I suppose that is one of the things we're going to find out. I'm hoping your voices from diverse nationalities and backgrounds will shed light on just how far we have come since 1973.