Horrible Goose flag

[boxofdelights]

One of my students had a new sticker on her phone case: a white goose, maybe the Horrible Goose? with a flag in its beak. The flag had a broad horizontal white stripe in the middle, with narrower stripes above and below in pink, orange, and purple.

"What does your goose's flag represent?" I asked.

"It looks like the lesbian Pride flag. I'm not a lesbian, I just like the goose. Actually I didn't know it was a goose; I thought it was a duck."

I like living in a world where a thirteen-year-old can say "I'm not a lesbian" with the same emotional weight as "I like the goose."

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Absolutely!

Speaking of lesbian birds, Radiolab's current episode is about the discovery of lesbian seagulls and its impact on scientific and religious communities.

Lesbian Lulu Miller tells the story

https://radiolab.org/podcast/seagulls

[boxofdelights]

Cool!

[adrian_turtle]

I love that lesbian is so much less stigmatized than it used to be. There was no lesbian pride flag when I was 13, but if there had been I doubt I would have recognized it. (And in the unlikely event I recognized it, I would never in a million years have admitted to a teacher that I recognized it.)

Back at in early 2020, several of my friends from synagogue began studying daf yomi, the daily page of Talmud. They said it kept them sane in the isolating days of the pandemic. On zoom, they quoted bits to me, and I often had trouble keeping track of the distinction between jokes about the Talmud, commentary on the Talmud, and actual Talmud text. This bit is either actual text, or three (3) people were very convincingly pulling my leg.

There's a little section on interpreting dreams, and they are going back and forth about different dreams. What does it mean to dream of a goose? Oh, to dream of a goose means you will gain wisdom. (Why? Because of the bit in Proverbs about wisdom cries aloud in the streets, and everyone knows a goose cries aloud in the streets. QED.) But what does it mean to dream of sexual relations with a goose? The great dream interpreter said that means you will gain wisdom and become head of a yeshiva. (Why? This is more confusing. One of the sages discussing the matter finally says that he dreamed of having relations with a goose, and now he is head of a yeshiva, so that must be the correct interpretation.)

[boxofdelights]

That is hilarious.

[sabotabby]

Awww that's adorable.

[sovay]

I like living in a world where a thirteen-year-old can say "I'm not a lesbian" with the same emotional weight as "I like the goose."

That is great.

[lunabee34]

Amen. I like living in that world, too.

[silveradept]

That is a really nice world to live in.