Baseball metaphors for sex
In the culture of American adolescents, the game of baseball is often used as a euphemistic metaphor for the degree of sexual intimacy achieved in intimate encounters or relationships. In the metaphor, prevalent in the aftermath of World War II, sexual activities are described as if they are actions in a game of baseball.
Although details vary, a broadly accepted description of what each base represents is as follows:
- First base - mouth to mouth kissing, especially open mouth ("French") kissing involving the tongue.
- Second base - aggressive stimulation between the neck and waist, usually shirtless or under the shirt.
- Third base - manual or oral stimulation of the genitalia.
- Fourth base (Home run) - the act of penetrative intercourse.
- Fifth base - occasionally included as a euphemism for anal sex
Sex education
Educators have found the baseball metaphor an effective instructional tool when providing sex education to middle school students. Levin and Bell, in their book A Chicken's Guide to Talking Turkey With Your Kids About Sex, make use of it to aid parents in the discussion of puberty with their children, dividing the topics into "first base" ("Changes from the neck up"), "second base" ("Changes from the neck to the waist"), "third base" ("Changes from the waist down"), and "home plate" ("The Big 'It'"). The bases may be different for different people and sexes.
Recent changes
This sequence of "running the bases" is often regarded as script, or pattern, for young people who are experimenting with sexual relationships. The script has changed slightly since the 1960s. Kohl and Francoeur note that with the growing emphasis in the 1990s on safe sex and efforts by the feminist movement to expand sex beyond heterosexual penetrative intercourse, the "home run" has taken on the additional dimension of oral-genital sexual intercourse. Richters and Rissel conversely point out that "third base" has since become seen, by some people, to comprise oral sex as part of the accepted pattern of activities, as a pre-cursor to "full" (i.e. penetrative) sex.
Mullaney reports the idea that the introduction of oral sex is in fact a "new teen model", that is replacing the "traditional base system", in part as an "unintended offspring of 'abstinence-only' education". In this new model, sex acts, including many that were not included as part of the traditional "base" system, are classified in a wholly different way. The acts that count as "sex" are distinguished from those that do not count as "sex" according to whether it is possible to become pregnant from them. Thus, oral sex, anal sex, and "a variety of other acts" are reclassified in the new model as "not a big deal" and "part of the realm of abstinence". Mullaney states that "obviously, not all teens subscribe to this revised model of classification".
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