By Lília

We talk a lot about equality for women, equal pay, ownership of our own bodies, but we tend to keep sexuality apart. Maybe because in many cultures people don’t discuss it in any form. But mostly because if women take over their own sexuality, they can and will ask for more say in what happens to their bodies in the bedroom. (Or anywhere, really!)

As March is the Women’s History Month, this is the moment to talk about our sexuality as well. What makes us tick? What have scientists come up with all their research? What about our fantasies?

Inspired by these questions, we’ve put together a list of 5 books to inspire all women to rethink their role as sexual beings. To understand ourselves and our sexual desires. And to make us go for it.

And if you’d like to read more about it, check our Sexuality highlights list.

My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday

In the 1990s Nancy Friday decided to find out about women’s sexual fantasies. And safe behind the walls of anonymity, hundreds of real women responded to Nancy Friday’s call for details of their own most private fantasies. My Secret Garden is the daring compilation of those fantasies.

Even now, in a new millennium, thousands of women each year buy a new copy of this astounding classic of feminist literature. Join them in their exploration of the meaning of desire. Dare to read, dare to dream, and dare to discover the beautiful blossoms, the winding paths, and the hidden nooks of female sexuality.

Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski

For much of the 20th and 21st centuries, women’s sexuality was an uncharted territory in science, studied far less frequently – and far less seriously – than its male counterpart.

That is, until Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are, which used groundbreaking science and research to prove that the most important factor in creating and sustaining a sex life filled with confidence and joy is not what the parts are or how they’re organized but how you feel about them.

Colleague Matty wrote a book review about this title and you can read it here.

The Come As Your Are Workbook by Emily Nagoski

A practical workbook from the New York Times-bestselling author of Come As You Are that will radically transform your sex life.

In The Come As You Are Workbook,  Nagoski offers practical tips and techniques that will help women to have the mind-blowing sex that they deserve (and that men have been having all along).

This collection of worksheets, journaling prompts, illustrations, and diagrams is an engaging companion for anyone who wants to further their understanding of their own bodies and sexuality.

Love, Sex and Awakening by Margot Anand

A true virtuoso of Tantra and a brilliant star in the universe of erotic delights, bestselling author Margot Anand has led a life of sexual ecstasy and spiritual bliss. This book recounts her fascinating adventures and provides techniques and exercises to help you connect to the spiritual potential of sex and cultivate a deeper, more fulfilling love life.

Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonimous – collected by Gillian Anderson

When we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain. And yet for many reasons – some complicated, some not – so many of us don’t talk about it. Our deepest, most intimate fears and fantasies remain locked away inside of us, until someone comes along with the key. Here’s the key.

Revisiting the idea sparked in My Secret Garden, in this generation-defining book Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous letters of hundreds of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous letter). Want reveals how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous.

And as an extra, the eternal question: if a woman has a different way of seeing sex, why is she considered a slut? The Ethical Slut, by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton, is not about women being sluts, but what its subtitle says: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love. So, sexuality in a much broader sense.