Remember high school and using the baseball system to describe how far you went on a date? My friends and I were debating whether oral was third or not, with six of the seven saying 3rd and a lone dissenter claiming any fluid exchange equalled 4th.
Curiously, the holdout was the youngest of the group, neatly putting a kink in my figuring that things are different post-Lewinsky.
I’m 35, grew up in the 80s and I remember the base system being quite rigidly defined as french, fondle, finger/fellate and fuck. We equated fingering a girl with sucking a guy which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense now, but those were widely accepted analogous third base activities then.
So either oral is third because only tab A into slot B is fourth, or it’s fourth because fourth equals orgasm for at least one of the two involved. What’s the straight dope?
Well, I just graduated high school, and the last time I really heard the base system discussed at any length (ninth or tenth grade), it went like this (for the majority of people):
1 = Kissing
2 = Above-the-waist play
3 = Below-the-waist play
4 = Intercourse
I’ve always thought it was
1st base–kissing (including tongue kissing), neck hickeys
2nd base–above the waist touching/play, breast sucking
3rd base–below the waist touching/play, mutual manual masturbation (say that five times fast)
4th base–any kind of sex where the penis is inserted into anything except a hand, or oral sex is given to the female, or a toy penetrates the female in any part of her body
So yes, IMO oral sex is fourth base/homerun. Oral sex IS SEX, there’s no way around it.
I think the definition has changed. When I was a teenager (in the early 80’s), the “bases” were as described as those above: 1st was kissing, 2nd was petting above the waist, 3rd was below the waist and a intercourse was a homerun. Back then, oral sex was considered to be going further than intercourse. It wasn’t usually an explicit step on the bases but it would have been considered at least equivalent to intercourse and ruled a homerun by my peers at the time.
Sometime in the 90’s oral sex changed from being step further than intercourse to being considered an intemediate step and now it seems to get incorporated into third base as basically an extension of heavy petting.
But the question isn’t whether it’s sex, it’s whether it’s a homerun.
And while oral may be quite far–so far as a teenage male would be concerned, if Mr. Happy isn’t spelunking there’s still room to go!
Full-on sex and full-on sex only could ever be a home-run, just as “homerun” indicates that you’ve gone the full course and there is nothing left.*
Of course, there’s really still lots more kinky stuff that can be tried I’m sure–but again we’re talking about your average 12yo white male, who probably doesn’t have copraphagia on the chart.
First base was above the neck.
Second base was above the waist.
Third base was below the waist.
Home Run was intercourse.
Oral was beyond the purview of such things, as was (there’s no pretty way to say this) “tit-fucking.”
And let’s not forget the best slang of all for having sex in a very uncomfortable place…
[sub]what? like the back of a Volkswagen?[/sub]
I think this is generally the consensus view now among young adults.
It certainly was true for me back when I was, well, a baserunner. I was stranded on third for a long time. As nice as the third base coach was, I really wanted to touch 'em all. I tried juking off the base to induce a balk, but it never worked.
Eventually I was able to score on a hit-by-pitch with the bases loaded, but that’s another story.
I kind of agree,Dio. Since at least some of us 80s kids had oral as 3rd base, it didn’t change completely in the 90s. Maybe the majority slotted it into 3rd then, sure, but it wasn’t completely unheard of before that.
When I was in High School (graduated 1997) oral sex wasn’t sex (so, if you had oral sex, you were still a virgin). It was just play, so third base, I guess.
I didn’t have boyfriends until college, so this is all secondhand.
By the “only vaginal penetration is a homerun” rule, does this mean that lesbians can’t make it all the way? Is female oral sex on the same base as male, or is it not as “serious” since not many body fluids are exchanged? Where does anal sex (either straight or gay) fit in? I know what I think, but I’m curious as to where others place these acts.
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