>>I still think the evidence overwhelmingly points to this being culturally
learned,
not part of our intrinsic biology.  That's all.<<

Lisa said..
>>Okay, here's another thought, Kathy. The animal kingdom notwithstanding, is
it possible that people in these other cultures block out arousing feelings
and do not connect them to sex *because* breasts are not a part of sexuality
in their culture?  The reverse of what you've been saying..........<<

I think both views are tenable, and as demonstrated, plausibly arguable,
but we don't need to hold either. Few things in life are really truly
black/white. They're mostly shades of grey. We all generalise from our
experience,which is fine, but can be misleading. I think the safest
position is simply that humankind is so varied that what is true for one
won't be true for everyone. On this assumption, the spectrum will range
from those who have to be educated (culturally conditioned) to feel arousal
from stimulation of any body part anywhere to those who need to learn to
bring under appropriate personal control spontaneous (biologically
mediated) arousal from everything from breasts to toe-sucking by the baby
goat. And maybe some people have interestingly wired knees while others
just have lots of oxytocin receptors in breasts that do wonderful things
for them naturally, while others need to learn to identify the interesting
bits and play with them, by cultural conditioning. I think it's both and
varies in balance across and within cultures. And I don't think it matters
greatly which understanding predominates, except where one position or the
other is being used in ways potentially harmful to women and babies. There
is no virtue in being one or the other. To me virtue lies in learning to
use things but not people (maybe especially for sex because it is so
personal and powerful); to truly respect difference; and all that stuff.
The good thing is that learned or spontaneous, cultural or biological, the
system surely works wonderfully well!