Sunday 13 May 2007

For Call Girls: Private Sex Workers in Australia is a book by Roberta Perkins and Frances Lovejoy that includes some material that might shock some people. The Australian picked up on a particular aspect of the study, for which the authors interviewed "about 200" prostitutes.

Half of them had had sex before the age of 16 and "15-16 per cent of the prostitutes they surveyed had had penetrative sex before the age of 12, but that only a few described this as rape".

They also report that 14 per cent of prostitutes had their first penetrative sex with a relative or family friend, but did not regard this as "necessarily a negative experience".

The authors received "almost $80,000" from the National Health and Medical Research Council to prepare their study.

In Japan, it's the girls who are taking matters into their own hands, reports Jun Hongo for The Japan Times.

When Asuka Izumi was 12 and doing a photo shoot "the director asked her to put on a string bikini".

"It wasn't a big deal. The director asked me to do it, and I did it because I wanted to," says Izumi, now 14. Her Web site shows what she's willing to expose for her career. Kotomi, her mother, "said she once found her daughter's work displayed in a hardcore porn shop in Tokyo's Kabukicho district, but it didn't bother her".

"I feel that anyone who buys Asuka's work has the right to do whatever they want to do with it."