Is it known for sure that bases feel slippery because of the production of soap/surfactant?
Potential candidates might include:

Soap/surfactant,
Glycerol produced from hydrolysis of &quot;finger lipids&quot;,
Broken down protein products, or
the pre-existing [inter-cellular lipid layers][5] that would be exposed by the removal of successive layers of cells within the stratum corneum.


Very good guesses but none of the above actually (i think, what does &quot;finger lipids&quot; mean?). But the reason bases feel slippery to bare skin no matter how much you scrub first, is bases attack the phospholipid bilayer of your cells quite readily not only saponifying them, but breaking the inter-molecular bonds of molecules that already resemble a soap. Take for example phosphatidylcholine:

The phosphochloline already has all of the elements to make a soap and when base is added, the molecule does not need to interact with other molecules to achieve local charge balance, but now have the ions from the base to balance, which breaks intermolecular bonding creating a small layer of soap, making the base feel slippery.