You don't have to learn about it because the information is definitively trivial, in that it has no bearing on your life, despite your schooling probably giving you tests on it. However, it is useful to know because it's still part of pop culture. The stories vary because 1. It was written a long time ago, 2. It's been translated and intentionally mistranslated/altered/rewritten for social engineering reasons, and 3. It never happened. Let me throw out a disclaimer: this is not chatgpt, I just used Assassin's Creed Odyssey as a springboard into actually seeing what the whole story was. As a never-evil player, I felt bad doing the monster hunts, especially for Medusa.

Medusa was either very sexy or very monstrous. Maybe she was sexy, then became monstrous at the time of her serpentine perm. The unclear appearance comes from trying to reconcile three parts of the story: Zeus raped her so she was probably sexy, Athena punished her for it with the snake hair/stone vision thing and might have wanted her to go unloved, and Perseus has to be heroic so killing a sleeping beauty would be evil. Zeus and Medusa's offspring was born upon the beheading, as Pegasus (yes, the flying horse) burst from her corpse. So sometimes she's a centaur, too.

So where does it fall in pop culture? Well, some people like to use "Medusa" as an insult to some types women being reclusive, being ugly, or being ruthless. But on the other hand, some groups of (primarily) women have taken her image as a powerful symbol to represent something from their past, a part of the myth that is present in all retellings: sexual assault. Greek myths love revolving around warriors slaying beasts, but you can argue she wasn't a beast and was simply living in a distant place, wishing to be left alone. Perseus went after her anyway. There's very real parallels here with SA, misogyny, violating consent, and other such unfair interactions.

But again, this is all based on mythology, not historical facts. The meaning has been changed a thousand times and will be changed until the end of humankind.

Anyway, on a related note, something I was totally unaware of until a few years ago, was that the Amazon women were a Greek myth. It had nothing to do with South America. The myth existed without knowledge of that rainforest because they're totally unrelated. Amazon women were just a warrior group in the mythology. Apparently, when Europeans explored the area and found tall women, they figured it must be the Amazonians. That sounds like a bit of a normal total fuck up by the Europeans, on par with Columbus thinking he landed in India, maybe even with a cool respectful undertone ([X] doubt), but inr reality, the Amazons failed in nearly every tale. They were never meant to be a feminine icon. They failed because they were written to claim men had greater success in all feats.

Or at least that's one interpretation. Or one interpretation of the latest set of rewrites.

TBF I wasn't sure until I saw your comment and looked it up myself, I'm a total fraud!