Ok, so from my perspective breasts are definitely very, very nice. The old adage “more than a handful is wasteful” is a bit of a canard not least because humans can learn to palm anything from a magician’s nickel to a basketball, but, again from my perspective, breasts of any size feel wonderful in my hands. They look wonderful too. And so, yet again from my perspective, it makes sense that after the “first base” of kissing I, like many men from my culture, would be drawn to their partner’s breasts as the next place, the “second base” to reach for.

But… but… here’s one funny thing about that. Breasts feel great to me, and for quite a few (but by no means all) women the hands of an even marginally clued-in man can feel very nice on their breasts. But in the baseball metaphor of getting to various “bases” with a partner we often completely blank out on the effectiveness of other, somehow non-“base” erogenous zones.

For instance thinking back on classic extended evenings with various partners (as best I can with my laptop suddenly suspiciously tippy in my lap… must be some kind of… um… lump under there) it sure seems like more partners have responded more aggressively to me when, say, I spend a lot of time kissing, licking, and even gently biting the sides of their necks and shoulders than when I’ve spent the same time kissing, licking, and stroking their breasts. (Come to think of it, I think more of my partners than not have been receptive to me lavishing attention on their breasts after first lavishing it on their necks and throats!) And yet convention allows women to bare their necks but requires you to cover your breasts!

So, again, I’m not saying that breasts aren’t erogenous zones. (Heh, duh, and other one-syllable retorts. Also men, of course have breasts) I’m just saying that in the objectively grand enough scheme of things I don’t know if they’re so much more erogenous than, say, the throat, forearms, the instep of the foot, of fingers, palms, wrists, or forearms, of the backs or insides of knees, of lower or upper inner thighs, or hips, lower bellies, or asses (to name some of the more obvious zones) to warrant it’s own metaphorical “base.”

But that’s not really exactly what this post is all about. It’s actually about sex in the post-Victorian, post-Title-9 world where women are no longer expected to, and no longer instructed to by institutions of church, state, and medicine, to lie passively back and “think of England.”

Anyway, when I think of the video pornography I’ve been looking at lately (I really only just started and I still vastly prefer text and still images) I’ve noticed a couple of things. First, in snippets that seem to be recorded by women who are sort of, I dunno, documenting what they do, women generally take off their pants to masturbate but very often don’t take off their tops. Meanwhile when they seem to be more intentionally performing for an audience of (presumably) men then the top often comes off before the pants, and breasts are given more time and attention. (And if I didn’t have one further point to get to I might stop here and ask whether you masturbate to “the bases” or cut straight to the chase. But I don’t want to stop yet.)

The other thing I’ve noticed from these various videos is how extraordinarily active sex seems to be — circularly influenced, I think, by industrial porn — compared to how most people I’ve seen having sex in real life. Not only are the men involved as rumpy-pumpy as ever, especially when above or behind their partners, but women too no not only rock, roll, and gyre but shake, shimmy, rattle, and grind in ways that put their generally (in porn anyway) unbound breasts in what looks like uncomfortably uncontrolled motion.

Which leaves me wondering if, left to one’s own devices, whether more women wouldn’t leave their bras on for intercourse rather than removing them as their partners, generally, would prefer. In other words would we see more sports bras during sex if we used fewer sports metaphors involving breasts as “second base?”