Are there some tastes and opinions that you just cannot understand?

The real need for body piercings and tattoos has always eluded me. Some I will admit are very pretty though!

This. Yes, the whole thing. And that that’s what some kids in Jersey (and elsewhere) want to be. Toddlers and tiaras and teeth enhancers for little girls and doing this to your children ‘cause ain’t nothing going on in your town and you think it’s a good idea because you always wanted a crown. And you know what else I don’t get: how teen members of gangs don’t see how obvious it is that all their rituals, ways of being, violence is just a show, a performance…powerless people with powerful weapons playing war games and how unfortunate it all is (though I do understand the many factors surrounding people joining gangs) – same for bigger wars.

Thanks @Cruiser. I’ve considered tattoos in the past, but I just know my tastes change too rapidly for any permanent body art. The people with the really nice work must be interesting characters.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I wish I could give you multiple GAs! Thanks so much!

There are many things I don’t understand as to how or why people think as they do. But I will defend to the death their right to think whatever it is as long as it isn’t against the law.

Let’s see, there is quite a long list . . .

Rap music blasting through bass speakers in other people’s cars that I can hear from inside my home with doors and windows closed.

People who have rights (say to marry) who don’t want other people to have the same rights.

Why God thought poison ivy was a good idea.

People who think dog fighting, cock fighting, etc. are entertainment.

The work of some abstract artists that some people seem to really appreciate (I really just don’t get it).

The concerns of some newer folks to Fluther for the amount of lurve they (and others) have/don’t have.

People who listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck and parrot back what they have heard without thinking (there is a great video online of Glen Beck’s recent event in which they interviewed people—I struggle to understand that this many Americans are incapable of independent thought and don’t even know, themselves, why they are opposed to/in favor of some of the tenets). I can understand (and even appreciate) people who have differing political views if they have a brain in their head and can share meaningful thoughts.

The blood-thirsty parents of Little League (insert any sport or organized childhood activity).

I need to stop before I stir up every rap-playin’, rights reducin’, poison ivy spreadin’ right-wing lunatic artistic cock-fighter who is new to Fluther and feels the need to clean my clock (which I probably also won’t understand).

@Kayak8 Completely agree on the dog/cock/bear fighting. GA.

Oysters on the half shell. I have tried many times and just cannot figure out why or how people like them. Ewwwww.

@marinelife Without wanting to get off topic, if you didn’t believe a particular stance to be moral or acceptable for a rational person to hold, would you campaign to make it illegal?

@Kayak8 Great list, thanks.
@majorrich I tried an oyster once. Never again. Thanks!

@majorrich The trick is Vodka. Enough vodka and you don’t even notice the oyster . . . (which kind of goes to your point of why do it at all . . . and it ruins perfectly good vodka . . .) OK, you changed my long-held belief . . .

Rap/Hip Hop culture

Pedophilia

Beastiality

Mayonnaise

Sock with sandals

I’m never going to understand how this can be allowed to happen in today’s world. Just not right.

@Neizvestnaya I think that will be the only time we ever see paedophilia and mayonnaise make the same list! Thanks.
@ucme We used to say “only in America” over here, but now Australia is the second most obese nation. So sad.

People who believe that Obama made abortion at 9 months legal.

@janbb Huh? Are there really people like that, or are you taking the piss out of people who opposed him on anti-abortion grounds?

I don’t understand anchovies on pizza.

shiny wheels that still spin when the car is stopped, why? Tricked out 4×4’s that never go off road( unless you count the speed bumps in the mall parking lot). clothes on dogs. Paris Hilton. people who choose to have enough kids to make their own soccer team…and then rub our noses it it all by insisting they get a reality show. women with sooo much make up on it looks like they applied it with a shovel. Chez t-shits.

I can’t understand opinions of people who feel they have to control other people’s private lives, like marriage restrictions, drug laws, censorship of books games and movies, etc.

I have lost the capacity to understand why one would indoctrinate their children with beliefs (religious or political) from an age too young for the child to choose it of their own free will.

I do not and can not understand how anyone can feel more comfortable having a firearm in the same house as their children. I get worried if my son is in the kitchen while I’m boiling a pot of water for tea, much less having modern death machines lying about.

My brain can not wrap around the desire to wear tragically uncomfortable clothing

The “Trickle Down Method” is beyond my comprehension. Though, I’ve heard that it literally makes no sense, so that could be why.

Absolutely.

• Gun Ownership
• Pageant Children / Stage Moms
• Bigotry and Prejudice Against Race, Sex, or Orientation
• Obsessive Sport Fans
• Blindly Religious People
• People Who Consistently and Publicly Disparage their SO

I simply do not GET these perspectives/beliefs/activities. They don’t all offend me (some do) – but I certainly shake my head at all of them.

@chyna: Did you put your ear close enough to the pizza to hear them?

I don’t understand the overuse with lawn ornaments. This does not include a gnome, or a pair of pink flamingos, or the extravagant holiday decorations, or the humorous. I’m talking about when the yard is filled with them and there isn’t even a general theme. Why does this occur? Is it because they were gifts from friends after the first one was put out, and now the new owners feel that it would be disrespectful to not display them? Any enlightenment would be appreciated.

@Pied_Pfeffer – I haven’t a clue. I live in a city, and any lawn ornament that I might put out would vanish overnight…

Absolutely. I never undertood how anyone could like lima beans.

Everything my best friend ever says or does..

@Seek_Kolinahr I also don’t understand Trickle Down. Well, I understand why those earning, say, a physician or lawyer’s salary would be for it. I don’t understand how anyone poorer wouldn’t see it as outright theft.

.
– People who drive slow in the fast lane, who do not recognize that so many cars are having to change lanes and go around them.
– That so many Americans fight for the socialist notion of equal results, rather than equal opportunity.
– People who point to Fox News and proclaim that the US media is, and always has been, far right of center (and don’t realize Fox is a direct result of the opposite.)
– That a vast majority of the world’s population believes utterly in fairytales and the spirit world; that they confuse good intended historical guidance to be the word of God.
– That Canadians so often confuse their deep love of beer with the misguided notion that their country actually makes great beer.

——————-
– That Soccer is the world’s most popular sport.
– That more people are not horrified at “dance scenes” in movies; America’s worst cultural contribution to the world.
– Certain American immigrant/illegals who widely share the custom of shamelessly throwing trash on the ground. (However, those very same people ROCK in regards to fast lane etiquette, because it is illegal in their country to even drive in the fast lane, unless for passing, so they get a reluctant pass.)
– Desert rats or farmers who have zero aesthetic comprehension, and have entire junk yards on their property. People who have no “personal property hygiene”; not realizing that a city, or property, or car, can be architected and clean, and as beautiful as a forest, if we choose to treat it that way.
– That so many Americans are completely oblivious and acquiescent to the horrid evil abomination that is Pan & Scan.

I can understand many of the behaviours and irrational beliefs I observe in others. They are often explained by intentional ignorance, intolerance and insensitivity.

I can not understand how so many people refuse to speak out against things that promote hatred and or violence against other people. Ignoring such abuses allows them to spread. I believe as rational, sentient and caring humans we have responsibilities that we ignore at our peril. The fear of consequences is not an adequate explanation when the consequences of silence are at least as bad.

I can not understand the choice of intentional ignorance. I see it as the intellectual equivalence of self-inflicted injury.

I can not understand how people can destroy their own immediate environment and expect that they will not ultimately suffer from such behaviour.

Religious fanaticism and Holy Wars!

I don’t understand open marriages.
I guess I just can see my husband with another and being okay with it.
I don’t see how others do it.

That proselytizing Liberals are not recognized more widely for what they are – just followers of another dogmatic religion, thumping to the beat.

That they feel the desperate need to go out of their way to preach the word.

Christians are often not half as absorbed, self-righteous, and pushy in their informed point of view.

And that so many people in the religion of Liberal use words incorrectly like “ignorant” as a catch-all slight for things they simply don’t agree with.

Which is about as effective as calling Muslims “ignorant” for not practicing Christianity, or vice versa. (subject to whatever topic is at hand)

@ipso How were you yourself not proselytizing right then?

All kinds of things, but the top of the list are people who think that their way is the only way, or people who feel justified in forcing their views on others. Whether it’s people who throw paint or blood on those who wear fur, those who want to kill doctors who perform abortions or bomb abortion clinics, or bombers who want to kill “infidels”. Why can we not simply accept that everyone does not se things “our” way and that this is ok?
People who malign the views of another political POV are right up there. I see lots of over-simplifying and generalizing to lump people together so they can then be contemptuously dismissed, and the same for religious beliefs.

I don’t understand Gangs. “Turf” wars. It’s not their turf.
I don’t understand racism and bias against transexuals, gays, foreigners, etc.
I don’t get the point of keeping birds in cages and wild animals in a zoos.
I don’t get over-zealous anti-abortion people. Don’t like abortion? Don’t fuckin’ have one dude.
I don’t get people who will walk into oncoming traffic while talking on cell phones with no regard for their own safety.
I don’t get why a twelve year old would want to purposely get pregnant.
I don’t get the FDA that will outlaw marijuana but then pimp Rx drugs to patients that have side effects that will give them loss of bowel function, blood clots, brain damage, erectile dysfunction, blindness, hearing loss, tremors and death.
I don’t understand pediphiles.
I don’t understand going into someone else’s country, telling them what to do and making slaves out of them.
Chitterlings, pig feet, cow tongue and pig ears and other disgusting parts of animals that people eat.
I’ll stop now this could get long.

I’m with @ucme
I cannot and will never understand the reason behind all of this needless death.
I don’t understand our lack of acceptance for one another.
I don’t understand why we can’t work together and respect the earth.
I don’t get the reason kids admire the cast of Hills the way they do.
It’s so very sad that people have become so desensitized that they will purposefully harm another human being.
I don’t know why we can’t go back to basics and get our priorities right

@Kayak8: Right there with you on the abstract artists. Jackson Pollock? Puh-lease. More like a four-year-old who ate paint and then vomited.

I have never understood racism and I don’t just mean on a basic moral level. I mean on a physical level. It doesn’t make any sense to me that someone would think that a person is different based solely on what the outermost layer of their body.

Maybe this’ll rile some people up, but I’ve never been able to understand how someone can say they put certain religious ideas above their family. Nothing goes above my family and my family includes more than just those to whom I am related because they are the most important things in my life.

I’ll never understand how a lot of people only define success through their jobs. The way I see it, if I am happy and supporting myself, then I am successful.

@Trillian – Wonderful answer!

People who think that they are a woman when they were born a man…sheesh….

@Ben_Dover

I’m glad you can feel safe making light of the political and social struggle of a group trying to defend against discrimination. (I am, just so you know, not assuming that you’re prejudiced and horrible…just using this as an example :-))

However, if that was meant with a tinge of seriousness, I appreciate clarity in my bigotry. I mean, as a gay man, I appreciate being called “f****” than other, more passive approaches – I miss the days when hate was all sorts of loud and crazy as opposed to quiet and masking itself as reason.

@iamthemob Let’s give @Ben_Dover the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t mean what he said in a malicious, close-minded way. I’m sure his intention was not to hurt anyone.

@stardust _“It’s so very sad that people have become so desensitized that they will purposefully harm another human being.”

Human beings have been harming one another for as long as they have existed.

@Akua

That’s exactly what I did – I specifically said that was not my assumption, but I was using the comment as an example, and followed up with my “but if you were serious” bit. :-)

Regardless, I shouldn’t be expected to let that slide, should I? The acceptance of subtle discrimination is how we move towards a general acceptance of it. I would hope that anyone would stand up to point that out as menacing in any circumstance, and I think when it’s done casually it’s at it’s most insidious.

I thought that was clear – if not, I reiterate that I wasn’t assuming intentions. I will state however that a statement that refers to a group in a discriminatory manner should, in the vast majority of cases, be considered damaging or harmful regardless of the intent.

@Akua Well, there are only 3 options:
1) @Ben_Dover really believes that, and that breaks my heart.
2) He was joking; like frat boys calling each other “faggot” when one dude can’t complete a bong hit, but they would never go Dylan Klebold on anyone’s ass. This makes him an insensitive [redacted].
3) He’s a troll.

Anyone who doesn’t like Arrested Development or Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Anyone who likes the show “Friends”
Anyone who calls him/herself a “metalhead” and listens to all the hip and trendy mallcore but doesn’t like Sabbath. Luckily, I’ve never had the misfortune of running into someone like that.

@Michael_Huntington What do you dislike about Friends?

@papayalily

I was debating whether to spell out the whole word, and went with the less inflammatory. I appreciate that you had the guts to step up, because I think it’s an important point.

@iamthemob yes I saw that you wrote that you weren’t assuming, I just wanted to make sure that @Ben_Dover didn’t feel misunderstood just in case he wanted to explain what he really meant and set the record straight. @papayalily .. umm is there a choice #4?

and for the record, if @Ben_Dover doesn’t feel the need to set the record straight then I will have to believe that he meant what he said. That being the case I choose #‘s 1, 2 & 3 re: @papayalily.

@Akua ben dover’s statement seems as clear to me as everybody else’s. He doesn’t understand transsexuality. edit: the sheeesh part may indicate, well, lack of tact, sensitivity, and knowledge.

@Akua Theoretically, in this endless world of possibilities, yes, but it’s not probable. However, if you have another you’d like to add, feel free to submit it.

I don’t understand people who don’t learn about what they don’t understand, before declaring it a lost cause =P

@liminal

As if, for the more complicated things, there’s a way to fully understand it, and you have to keep learning about it.

AWESOME response.

@iamthemob edit: nevermind

@Akua I was being passive aggressive towards ben dover, sorry for being indirect like that. I should have addressed ben dover with: What don’t you get? But of course I am sooooo helping derail this question!

The last few posts on this thread lead me to realize one of the opinions that I can’t understand – how people can just accept casual discriminatory comments without letting it be known that it’s offensive.

Again, I feel bad that Ben_Dover may be the scapegoat here…but in the end, I think that part of why people don’t say anything when stuff like that is said is that they don’t want to make the person making the statement feel uncomfortable. I get it on a basic social level, but that can’t hold true…cause once we step back, I can’t see the logical argument behind being quiet in order to not offend someone who has made a statement that everyone should realize is discriminatory and therefor offensive.

And who doesn’t like Judas Priest?
I mean I can understand turbo, ram it down, and everything after painkiller, but Rob Halford is the shit.
Whiskey woman don’t you know that you are driving me INSSSAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEE

@iamthemob

I wouldn’t say we (or at least, I) accept those comments, but sometimes it’s just not the venue, you know?

I carry a torch for a lot of causes (atheism, liberalism, gun control, natural parenting, civil rights…) but jumping to the offensive every time someone speaks out of line is simply not feasible.

I think @Ben_Dover knew exactly what he was saying, and that it was inflammatory. We know he knows he was being inflammatory. Standing here with our hands on our hips going, “Dude, that was mean” would have been ultimately pointless – much like trying to tell a street preacher, “Hey, my kids don’t need to hear your bigoted bullshit”. They don’t care.

@Michael_Huntington – We just throw them headlong into the pit, and watch them trip over their sagging skinny jeans trying to get out.

@Seek_Kolinahr regarding @Ben_Dover you expressed my point exactly. Thank you.

@Seek_Kolinahr a very mature sentiment. I wish I would have acted accordingly, the derogatory ‘sheesh’ pushed me over the edge. Sometimes it becomes about caring for the people being hurt by the preaching and not the preacher. Still, I can see this might not have been the best question to start getting all indignant with. I hate it when I get sucked in.

Alright, my list:
-People who’s vocabulary would be cut in half if you eliminated all the slurs (no wonder they’re pissed you won’t let them say the n word)
-Why anyone would want to have sex with someone who isn’t also have sex with them, because they’re wasted or tired or not in the mood or, of course, because they haven’t consented.
-People who don’t enjoy learning. I try not to judge them for this (and fail miserably, I will admit, but I try), but I just don’t get it. And by learning, I don’t mean school or tests or having to learn about a particular thing, but the general desire to expand their knowledge of the world around them.
-Apathy. I’m a very passionate person, and I just don’t get it when people are just generally apathetic and uninterested (and then not suicidal – THEN I get it…)

@Seek_Kolinahr

I think you misinterpreted me…which is funny, because we generally agree.

- I didn’t assume anything about Ben’s motive. The statement is unacceptable regardless and to let it stand without comment, however, is harmful in any context.

- I totally think Ben did this on purpose, personally, and is gonna be laughin’ himself silly when he reads this subsequent drama.

- This isn’t speaking out of line, though. The statement is an opinion that some people hold, and they can’t understand how people believe this. However, it is about a class of people with an identity members if which have been historically ridiculed, attacked, and even killed.

- I understand that you believe sometimes, it’s not the right venue. I would argue that it’s never, ever the right venue. I wan’t people to say what they think, but the attitude that “I’ll let it slide this time” is how we get the problem. I have been at too many events where I have been silent where some gay joke has been said, and people laughed, and many of them nervously, and I have been quiet. A child sees that, and they think it’s okay. The person who says it may be totally accepting, but not realize that effect. Or there may need to be a discussion. But to allow that to happen because there’s a time and place for everything means that there is a time and place to be racist, sexist, etc.

It’s not carrying the torch when it’s a simple statement expressing that the comment is inappropriate because it is discriminatory. If the person objects, I just say fine, I don’t mean you meant it, but you can see that it is, right?

If no, we need to discuss further. If yes, that’s it. That’s what I try to do more and more.

Plus, if I thought that I was saying something that a child would take as a lesson in discrimination, I would want to know wherever I was.

@iamthemob

If it were normal, human, one on one speech and @Ben_Dover and I were sitting in the park and he said “Gee, those transsexuals… Oi!” you better believe I’d have given him an earful.

However, this is a forum with guided topics of discussion. This particular discussion is to state things that other people think, that you do not understand.

Now, I would completely understand if you had taken offense at @Ben_Dover‘s comment, and gone on to post another discussion (Something like “Do you find it hard to understand why someone born with a female body would consider themselves to be a man?”) and then let fly, probably with a link back to @Ben_Dover ‘s original post.

Taking the entire topic off-track (like we’re doing right now) in order to scold someone who obviously doesn’t give a shit, is pointless and distracts from the forum.

@Seek_Kolinahr

This is the social section though, right? I thought that meant looser guidelines…

If it’s a discussion, then it won’t stay wholly on topic. It will go where the community dictates, at times unfortunately. If it were in the general section, then it could have been flagged. I would find that sad, personally, but those are the rules. I wouldn’t, on my end, want to delete Ben’s comment. I feel as if telling anyone they can’t say what they want for fear of retribution means a lot of unhelpful beliefs would not get voiced.

On a practical level, everyone addressing me is what’s taking this thread where it is. Now it is I who am being scolded for not following the rules (though I think I am). I tried very carefully to phrase my post to show that I did not assume this was Ben’s opinion, so that it could stand on its own. When I thought it was clear, I tried to clarify, but then was told that the statement was clear about what I was assuming, and that Akua was just making sure that Ben wouldn’t take it personally. Now, I am being called to task for pointless scolding because I said something was a discriminatory statement (which it was) on the thread (which could have been done in a PM if it was an important point) for taking us off topic (which wouldn’t have happened if it was a PM) when that was never the intent.

I never have asked anyone to be silent. I attempted to divorce the statement as much as possible from the person, and therefore cannot be accused of scolding someone. Any comments could have been addressed in PM, but because they’ve been addressed here I have to repeat that it is my belief that there is no appropriate forum in which a discriminatory statement should be viewed as okay. The fact that you have singled ME out as the person who should conform his behavior is asking that I do something that I never asked of Ben – to be quiet and sit down. I think it is actually scary that I have been asked to refrain from such behavior in a public space, particularly since I didn’t want it to be a debate.

I’m sorry, I have never before been reprimanded for trying to point out a slant at an oppressed class of people. My answer to this particular discussion question was that I don’t understand how people think it’s okay not to comment on discriminatory statements because of concerns about whether it’s an appropriate environment. My being called to defend why I didn’t stay silent here appears to be a demonstration of how I can’t, and never will, think that’s okay.

@iamthemob

Actually, I’m calling you out for bitching about everyone else not bitching about @Ben_Dover.

“The last few posts on this thread lead me to realize one of the opinions that I can’t understand – how people can just accept casual discriminatory comments without letting it be known that it’s offensive.”

I don’t get Furries. But I’ve made my peace and rejected my darkness. To each his own.

@Seek_Kolinahr

I see where that comes from. And I wasn’t trying to say that everyone else should have jumped on it. But that was totally easy to infer from my answer after following the thread. As long as someone speaks up, that’s often all that needs to be done.

Don’t understand people who eat things like hard-boiled eggs or egg salad. You’re eating something that smells like a stinkbomb. Okay, go ahead. But keep that shit at least 100 feet away from me. I’ll never forget that segment on College Humor where one of the characters referred to the egg salad sandwich as a “fart sandwich”. Exactly how I feel about it…

I do not understand people who like screamo music. If you like listening to whiny human excrement in the form of “music”, it’s your funeral…

I’ll also never fully understand homophobia. I understand it for the most part, but most of the time it’s just like: WHO. FUCKING. CARES. So there are men out there who like men. GET OVER IT.

I’ll also never understand the concept of being so devoted to a religion that you will kill yourself and innocent bystanders for it. I can understand religion as a part of life, but as more important than life and other people’s lives…I don’t get that at all…

Some mentioned controlling others’ lives; I don’t understand that either. The people who want to control what goes on in people’s bedrooms and people’s minds, honestly I have two words for them: fuck off.

@DominicX What’s screamo music? Might I know it by a different name?

Male homosexual sex. I don’t want any other penis ANYWHERE NEAR ME.

I am not a homophobe though. My aunt is gay, I love her to death, and I have (and have had) many gay male friends. In fact, I discussed this with one once. I described how repulsive the thought of a cock in my face was (literally and figuratively), and he said he pretty much felt the same way about vaginas.

I laughed.

@papayalily

Screamo is really loud angry emo I think. Whiny, pretty indie music that matters (emo) but with a hard edge and loud vocals.

the question here is, ”Are there some tastes and opinions that you just cannot understand?”

I said I don’t understand, ”People who think that they are a woman when they were born a man…sheesh….”

This has generated a bit of controversy, apparently. But it certainly wasn’t a hate comment, nor am I a homophobe, although I detect a certain amount of heterophobe emanating from some here who apparently took personal affront to my simple statement.

And yet, I still don’t understand people who were born a man who feel the need to become a woman. This is not an attack. It is simply something that I don’t understand.

I also don’t understand people who are going bald who will spend thousands of dollars to recover their lost hair.

No one attacked my earlier statement wherein I state that i don’t understand people who like lima beans. And yet I don’t hate those people nor was I poking fun at them.

So I must assume that some here are bit touchy about presumed attacks on their choice of sexual identity…and it is not I who am the bad guy, but rather these people are unsure of their choice and assume the worst in anyone who might appear to be making fun of them.

You are what you are. You are born who you are. I find making the best of who I was born to be was a better choice than wailing and moaning about it and then doing whatever I could to change it.
But that’s just me. To each his own and hey, if you want to be a woman but were born a man…or if you want to be a man but were born a woman…and you feel the need to do something about it…go for it. Change things.
But don’t get all in a dither when someone says that they don’t understand it. Be a man and accept that making such a major move might indeed cause others to wonder and not understand your need to do so.
Unless this is all just a drama queen thing (now don’t go off over the queen part).
I have been with women, and I have been with women who it turned out were really men. And those transgendered guys were really a lot of fun. But I wouldn’t tell my mom I had done so, and I still don’t understand that they felt the need to change.

As for all this hubbub over my simple harmless unassuming statement…sheesh!!!

Now, who’s gonna whine over @mrrich724‘s statement right above this?

@Ben_Dover

As a male homosexual, I’m not whining over @mrrich724‘s comment. It’s the same way I feel about breasts. I mean, seriously: what is so great about them? :\

:P

As for me, a penis near my face sounds like fun times to me…it’s all about perspective and preference. Different strokes for different folks, as cliched as it is.

I agree with you @Ben_Dover

It is something I also do not understand. Doesn’t mean I have any deep-rooted hate (or any hate) toward them for that matter. I just don’t understand it.

@DominicX

LOL, AND, as a hetero, I too don’t see what the hell is so great about tits. Why are women tits so different from man ones, that they should be shrouded when at places like the beach?

That’s something I don’t understand!

In fact, someone once said, “What’s so attractive about boobs? They’re just huge sacks of fat that hang off the front of a woman’s chest?”

Very well said.

@mrrich724 Thank you kind sir. I feel exonerated!

@mrrich724

As a gay man, I completely understand what’s so great about tits. Boobies are awesome – they’re bouncy and soft and I think they’re one of creation’s best ideas.

@iamthemob . . . instinctually, I am drawn to them, big or small. But once I let my brain think about it for a little . . . well, see the last comment I made about them above this one. . .

Women’s breasts are beautiful because they fed us, comforted us and brought a great deal of love into our lives as children.
As adults they still do the same for many of us (except maybe the feeding part).

I still for the life of me can’t understand why women must cover their breasts in public.

Exactly. They fed us, and did everything else to associate them to your mom. . . so where’s the sexuality, except possibly suggesting one woman is somehow better equipped to reproduce?

Is it Oedipal?

I wonder if the sexuality associated with them is somewhat Oedipal? (Not edible :P )

People who fully support a woman’s right to choice what happens in her uterus, but not her right to choose a different computer or TV show or brand of peanut butter.

I don’t understand what one of the Fluther default avatar images actually represents. It’s the one that @Ben_Dover and @iamthemob has. It looks like a blurry close-up photo of a black cat’s face. What exactly is it? And can’t at least one of you two upload another image? It confuses the heck out of me when you both are on the same thread.

@Pied_Pfeffer There, is that better?

@Ben_Dover Thank you! I’d still like to know what exactly the other avatar picture is of. Surely not a cat when all the others are of jellyfish.

@Pied_Pfeffer It is indeed a cat…Click on it @iamthemob and see the close up…

@Pied_Pfeffer Ask as a separate question in the Meta section.

I don’t understand

-any religion or any superstition(I used to think that I know why people need to believe in these things but I don’t understand how we got here,but I’m not sure anymore that I understand that “why”)
-why Justin Bieber and in general the disney stars are so popular and why they a have an army of teens ready to do everything for them
-how it appeared the idea of treating women and men differently.this puzzles me the most.Since the begins of humanity women had a very different and inferior status from men.Basically women were considered “slaves” of men.These things don’t happen so obviously anymore in developed parts of the world but in less “modern” countries these treatment of women is widely spread.Even if the “slavery” thing isn’t done physical anymore women and men still have some “slavery mentality” implemented deep in their brains as a results of thousands of generation who lived in the era of “women slavery“What I don’t understand why today there are so many books,magazines,movies etc that reinforce the idea that women and men should have different statuses in their relationship,that men and women think differently,that men is stronger than women etc.
-this kind of music
-all the make-up thing
-ketchup and mustard
-long nails
-marriage(I think this is just a trace of the man/women status,for me marriage is just a way to say a women is “yours”)
-racism
-eating stinky cheese
-going to an electro/trance club and dancing in brain washing music with a big crowd around you
-the idea of remixing a track and make it sound worse
I don’t understand many more things but I should stop here because I said the major ones

@ipso made an interesting point in this thread that I think plays the harmony to this thread’s melody. Looking at these two, I feel like I get a better idea of the kinds of questions that might elicit the most varied and open participation.

this went downhill fast

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Downhill from…?

@papayalily From simply answering the question to discussing how to answer the question to boobies.

@Christian95 How stinky do you have to get to not understand it? Swiss? Blue? Anything past cheddar?
The makeup thing – are you talking makeup in general or only when it looks like this
Long nails – again, how long must they be for you to not understand?

So back before civilization, humans were hunter/gatherers. Men did the hunting (because have you ever tried hunting with an infant? It’s not so good..) and women did the gathering. It was a fairly egalitarian way of life. But then agriculture and animal domestication came along, and you needed men to till the land and do lots farming things, as well as deal with the animals, so it’s easy to see how if a woman challenged mens’ authority over them, men could just be all “fine, you go get your own food. Oh, right, you can’t. Guess if you wanna eat, you’ll have to let us be in charge”. And then they wrote the Bible/Torah and gave themselves a divine right to be in charge and it just never really went back.

@papayalily Is it a bad time to mention that agriculture was invented by women, and that’s why the first monotheistic deities were female fertility goddesses?

@Seek_Kolinahr Not at all, in fact it is the perfect time. I’m just saying men took it over rather quickly.

The development of ancient religion from the goddess to the god is truly fascinating.

Once upon a time, fertility was a completely female mystery. Women had babies, their bodies nourished the babies, they had this magic that was completely unknown to society. Women were cherished and revered for this power, and it was believed that the gods must be women as well.

Then someone realised that it was after having sex with a man that she became pregnant in the first place. So the Goddess had a consort – who was originally portrayed as smaller, thinner, less powerful, etc. Then they became equals, and eventually the masculine ideal kind of took over, and it was phallic symbols everywhere, and my big-penised bull-god is better than your big-penised horse-god, and the world became a much more violent place.

@Seek_Kolinahr GA.

@papayalily
I’m not a fan of cheese at all,so I don’t know the subgenres.For me all cheese is stinky so maybe I should tell I don’t understand cheese at all,sorry for that.
I don’t understand the colorfull,very intense make-up like that you showed.
I don’t understand having long enough nails to start incommodate you,when you grab things,when you write etc.
I can come up(you,@seek kolinahr and others can too)about how it started the men/women status thing but I don’t understand why it kept going and almost no one did anything about it for a very long time and today this thing is still present but more at psychological level.

@DominicX i kind of like it, when you get angry,

but actually on balance i don’t like this thread, people seem to get real nasty about really unimportant shit, because it offends their sensibilities, oh how i wish they could get as riled about the stink of injustice as if it were putrid smelling blue cheese, or the cardinal aesthetic sin of having junk in their backyard. SHEESH!

@mammal I don’t think anyone got nasty on this thread, except for the little bit on transsexuals. The question was phrased to get people to talk about what they cannot understand, not what they intensely dislike. Some people said they don’t understand the hip-hop culture, but that doesn’t mean they think it shouldn’t exist or that other people shouldn’t like it.

OOooo. I know what I don’t get. Ketchup on everything. I just…. no.

@papayalily – I’m behind you 100% on that! I never put ketchup on anything. I want to taste my food, not ketchup…

Ketchup is food…kinda…

…okay, maybe you’re right. I can’t really support what I just said.

I don’t get people who are constantly on their cell phones or texting.
I don’t get people who stand on the sidewalk but have their baby stroller in the street waiting to cross while cars zoom by their child.
I don’t understand why a man would want to hit a woman. Ever. For any reason.
I don’t understand what happened to general kindness and empathy amongst human beings.

People who are filled with hate and fear and terrified of a Muslim or Hispanic takeover of America.

The Ku Klux Klan…
Enough said.

Open marriages and tatoos. I don’t think I know anyone who has engaged in either. I guess because I’m ancient.
What @Cruiser and @Frenchfry said. I guess they make good tv shows, though. For us ordinary, boring people to watch. (-;

I really don’t take issue with much these days, understanding that everyone marches to the tune of their own conditioning and levels of consciousness.

You can’t find fault with a donkey for not being a racehorse. People and their beliefs, choices, based on those beliefs, programming, are just what they are.

I accept what I don’t understand, but choose to keep company with birds that sing a similar tune as I. lol

Men who wear those huge, plastic earrings and expect to be taken seriously. Take them out and a stench fills the room. Is that sexy , manly or anything positive?
Tongue piercings. I guess they can look cute in a naval with a bikini but the pain having one inserted through the tongue for what purpose? It would be worse than having a seed stuck between your teeth. ewwwww
Women who wear skirts up as far as they can possibly go then cross their legs and follow it all up complaining that “he had the nerve to look at me like that.” What?

So, @Aster, I guess you wouldn’t understand scarification either?

To be honest, I don’t get the desire for most painful body modification, but we (as humans) have been doing it for a long, long time. Maybe after I get my first tattoo I’ll understand better. ^_^

@Coloma Thanks for your answer. I wasn’t trying to see what people take issue with here, just what they don’t understand. A donkey doesn’t know what it is like to be a racehorse, but that doesn’t mean it must dislike racehorses, or think that they should be anything but racehorses.

@FireMadeFlesh

Right! :-)

Really letting the truth of diversity and development sink in eliminates a whole lot of egoic angst about what and why others do what they do, like what they like, live how they live.

I don’t understand liars and those of low integrity, but I do understand that they are unconsciously doing what works for them as they understand it.

We all grow or do not grow in our tastes and inner developments, when we know better we do better.

@Coloma Marcus Aurelius (you may have noticed I love his quotes, so forgive me one more) said that you shouldn’t be surprised when a bad man does a bad thing, because he is acting according to his nature. I think every person does what they think is best, and in that sense every person is inherently good, but some people are ignorant of what is best. Where I disagree with another person on what is best is where I may think of them as wrong, or they may think of me as wrong, but regardless we are both doing what we think is best at any given moment.

@FireMadeFlesh

ZING!

And so we have effectively conquered all the worlds problems this morning in seeing there really are no problems just different levels of consciousness at work. lol

@Coloma And I think I finally know what you mean by ‘consciousness’! How can things suddenly become so clear at 2am?

@FireMadeFlesh

They become clear when they become clear….hahaha

Creationists. It’s not that I hate them or anything, I have creationist friends.
I just don’t get it.

I don’t get how some parents can just treat their children like a crappy friend.