The Bases...an addendum to the last post

A few administrative notes and then my post:

I am a college student. This is my last year. I am incredibly busy, as I have several applications/qualifying exams/a full course load (seriously, I am at maximum credit hours. Do not mess). That being said, the most I can update is twice a week. Twice. I'm sorry. I know, it's going down from every other day. I'll try to update every other day when I'm on break.

That being said, updates will occur on Mondays and Wednesdays. I hope that works, and thank you for still reading :)

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So, in regards to the last post I wrote, I got a question on formspring. This question was:

What was supposed to come after the "little boob action" to make it realistc?

-The Ignorant One

The Base System (1st Base, 2nd Base, 3rd Base, and Home) is basically a system of measurement for the "farthest" a heterosexual relationship has gone. Basically, I like to go with the Five F's System. The Five F's System vs the Base System is a lot like Metric vs. English. Everyone else in the world can understand the Metric system, but since Americans* are just soooo in love with baseball**, you basically just have to convert to the one that makes sense. Also, one can apply the Five F's System to any type of relationship involving a penis, and you really can't do that with the Base System, as its definition of "going home" is basically limited to P.I.V. Sex....but more on that later in the post.

That being said, the Five F's System is as follows:

1. Friends: There is no equivalent of the "Friend" stage in the Base System. This is stupid, because you really have a preliminary stage in all relationships, and that is "talking." As in, "we are friends but probably both of us want to go much farther, but we're just going to talk and flirt, etc."

2. French: "French" obviously refers to "French Kissing," that is, kissing with tongue and possibly a little upper body groping. In the Base System, this is "first base." However, many people have problems with the idea of "First Base" including upper-body groping, mostly because of the above-the-shirt, under-the-shirt, duration-of-time arguments.***

3. Finger: Now, there really isn't a clear equivalent for Fingering**** in the Base System. A lot of people like grouping it with making-out, upper-body groping as "Second Base." Some people like grouping it with oral sex. This is because people have mixed ideas as to what a handjob/fingering entails*****. "Fingering" in the Five F system doesn't really have anything to do with details like "Oh, was he actually inside, or was he just sort of fiddling around with my panties? And does it count if I was rubbing him above his pants?" In this system, "Fingering" really just means, "you were using your hands in some way to stimulate the genital area of your partner." It's sort of like how in physics, "work" doesn't mean what it does in layman's terms. Deal with it.

4. Fellatio: Obviously, "Fellatio" is just used as the catch-all term for oral sex because it's a lot easier to remember the "Five F's" System than it is to remember the "FFHFCF" System. It's a mnemonic device, NOT a political statement. But anyways...oral sex. It's a separate stage, and in the Base System, it is ALWAYS at third base. However, in the Base System, as stated above, it is often grouped with other activities involving the genital area. This is ridiculous, as there is a huge difference in the convenience level of covertly fingering someone's pussy, and actually being in a situation where you could, you know, eat hir out.****** Oral sex and Fingering are also completely different in terms of skill sets. While Oral sex can involve fingering/hand job-like motions, oral requires your mouth to know what it's doing. Just saying.

5. Fuck: Fuck means sex. Whatever your sexual identity, there is an equivalent of "going all the way." This is "Home Plate" in the Base System. "Fuck" is a nice general term because it can be thrown around in any situation and basically means, "we were as sexual intimate as two people of our genders can be." For "Home Plate," however, the implication is "if it's not penis-in-vagina sex, it's not going all the way." This means that girl can be anally penetrated by a guy, but some people would still not call that "having sex." Obviously, I have issues with that*******. "Fuck" can be applied to every single type of couple because it is a universal and fluid word.

Now, some notes on the system:

Yes, in almost every situation, the acts occur in this order. It is VERY rare for a consensual sexual encounter to go immediately to Fucking, or even to skip over Fingering. Oral sex/stimulation is a bit more flexible (it can be left out in many situations) but in terms of how far a couple has gone, normally people do go through these stages (whether they are having a one night stand that goes from zero to 60, or if they are in a committed relationship that is taking things step by step).

The issues I had with Mia and Michael were that it sounded like Mia went from taking it slow to basically wanting to jump Michael. The staging of it all just seemed a bit skewed. Generally, a couple has a set pace that they follow...going all or nothing is something generally unheard of. Mia seemed to have made up her mind to take it slow, and then, when Michael came back, she was perfectly willing to lose her virginity to him, even if she knew she had made the same decision for the WRONG reasons, two years before. It just seemed off.

I hope that helps!

And Remember folks, Jump Those Railroads!

xoxo,
Risk(Y)

PS: The nerdfighter thread is still active, and the formspring box is to your upper right. Please ask questions, as without questions, this blog wouldn't exist :)


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*And, you know, I'm an American, and it annoys me that the metric system isn't intuitive for me since it wasn't taught with emphasis in school.

**Or, you know, inches and other measurements that never, EVER make sense for conversion.

***In a nutshell, these arguments are: "Does it count if it's over the shirt, and in passing? Or does it have to be under the shirt? And does it count if it's over the shirt, and it's definitely placed there and even doing some massaging? And what about the bra? Do the boobies have to be in direct contact with hir hands and mouth?" etc. This is just ridiculous. In the Five F system, if there is boob action, you are Frenching. If you have arguments about this, I don't want to hear it. It makes sense, as Frenching=Making out and Making Out, as you can see from the first definition @ urbandictionary.com CLEARLY CAN INCLUDE "some groping." I mean, obviously, "Frenching" is much more of an emphasis on tongue action kissing, but tongue action kissing to the point of boob action is basically what is encompassed in the Five F System. Please don't argue this point. Just move on. This footnote is already ridiculously large and I don't want to come up with any more sources than are really necessary.

****Or, if you want to mess up the Five F format, you can convert very easily to "handjob." Does that work? Yes. Is it as alliterative? No. Am I still going to include it in this discussion because I hate being heteronormative? Yes. OK. Let's move on.

*****And PS: the beauty of the Five F system is that fingering/handjobs don't have to be mutual. I am under the impression that it doesn't count as "completing a base" unless both of you have done something.

******I'm sorry, but I just have to be blunt here. It's really easy to covertly slip your hands up a person's skirt/down hir pants. It's not so easy to gain enough access to the clit and vagina in order to, you know, lick. The Former can be done secretly and covertly in public...the other requires either really lax public indecency laws/privacy, and space to lay down. Obviously, a blow job can occur standing up, but the first requirement is still necessary.


*******Mainly, the fact that anal sex is genital-to-genital contact and requires as much, if not more, trust as PIV Sex. While on one hand, defining what "fucking" is, is something that should be decided on a case-by-case basis, I feel like the idea that a heterosexual couple must be having PIV sex in order to say that they are "having sex" is a very hetero-normative idea. A heterosexual couple could be having queered up sex. I find the idea "If a girl's vagina doesn't give her as much pleasure as her anus does, then she's not really going as far as she could go if she's not having vaginal intercourse" absolutely ridiculous, and also dangerous from a feminist/female standpoint.