Derek
@derektheheretic
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Host of SpiritYOUality || Co-Creator of Your Favorite Heretics || Ex-evangelical || ADHDer
LA ➡️ GA
Joined November 2020
Big news!! 🎉🎉. I have officially started a new YouTube channel podcast called—SpiritYOUality. Check out the link below with more details about the show and tag people you think I should have on the pod 🫶🏼
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“A gay person who still wants to attend church after the way they’ve been treated… I’m telling you, they have more faith than I do.” —Andy Stanley. I’m not endorsing Andy or his church, but it seems like he’s headed in the right direction.
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The “I feel called to ministry” to “deconstructed af” pipeline.
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Growing up evangelical taught me that my reality wasn’t safe, God wasn’t safe, my heart wasn’t safe, and my mind wasn’t safe. Not to mention, other worldviews and people groups were seen as unsafe. No wonder we have trauma manifesting as low self-confidence and anxiety disorders.
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Did you get baptized multiple times or do you not have religious trauma??.
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Were you told that God would play back your life on a big TV after you die or do you not have religious trauma??.
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did you…. ask Jesus “into your heart” when you were super young?. tithe money you got from your bday?. get baptized multiple times?. say “frick” or “heck” a lot?. shout “come on” & “amen” during sermons?. …then you got sum that ✨religious trauma ✨.
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You probably won’t hear this at church, but God didn’t need to beat the hell out of Jesus in order to save you from an eternity of fiery torment. The Divine is not an abusive parent with anger issues, only appeased by vicious retribution. That is neither love nor good news.
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if you ever prayed to be martyred for your faith then you have Extra Spicy™️ religious trauma.
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The reason evangelicalism fails to understand deconstruction is largely due to the supremacism that denies the possibility of being wrong. When anyone thinks their beliefs are absolute truth, then by default others are wrong and the only ones who need to change their mind.
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Christ is the Trans daughter you’ve turned your back on. Christ is the Palestinian you’ve bombed. Christ is the Drag Queen/King whose joy terrifies you. Christ is the pregnant person seeking necessary healthcare. Christ is the immigrant you imprison. Christ is ALL and in all.
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RE: my Andy Stanley tweet. I don’t think churches that are ambiguous about LGBTQIA+ inclusion are safe. Unless you are loudly affirming, then you are not an ally. Too often, churches masquerade as welcoming or inclusive, but take advantage of LGBTQIA+ volunteers & their tithes.
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Church: “ALL are welcome!”.Me: Including LGBTQ+ people?.Church: *elaborate verbal gymnastics*.
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Did anyone else use those Christianese dating culture phrases like “DTR”? Oof, I cringe just writing that out 🤢.
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Something-something “veggie tales sex joke” something-something “process theology” something-something “tooth and nail”
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Jesus: feed the poor…. American Evangelicals: no handouts, they gotta work. J: heal the sick…. AE: free healthcare? okay commie. J: welcome the immigrant…. AE: no, build the wall!!. J: whatever you do to them, you do to me. AE: America First! USA, USA, USA!!!.
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Evangelicalism taught me more about fear than it ever did about love.
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Evangelicals created a brand of defensiveness called apologetics rather than accept the uncertainty and inherent limits of belief. Apologetics is used by Christians to repress their “doubts,” instead of making peace with, and encouraging, questions.
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Nothing enrages Christians more than hearing Jesus loves and accepts every person they’ve been groomed to hate and exclude.
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“The reason I deconstructed is…”. ^^Type out the above and then let predictive text do the rest. I’ll go first…. “The reason I deconstructed is that the original game is a little more complicated.” 🤔😂.
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I used to have so much anxiety around “missing God’s voice” that I was terrified of wearing the wrong clothes or even ordering the wrong drink from Starbucks. Like bruh… anyone relate?.
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POV: my face when an evangelical starts their “bible clearly says” monologue.
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For my exvangelical friends who are still Christian, despite what that label often represents, what do you now think it means to “follow Jesus”?. (Note: evangelicals, this is not your thread to pop off or push your narrative).
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The Jesus I see in the Gospels wouldn’t “declare war” on those deconstructing, he would dignify their experience by befriending them & upholding their humanity. Christ isn’t a gatekeeping, authoritarian of beliefs, but a liberator from the very systems that abuse & control.
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I just finished “You People” starring Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy on Netflix. Y’all! I laughed and I cried 😭 It blends comedy & romance in such a genuine way, while tackling heavy topics like white privilege and racism. Arguably the best movie I’ve seen in recent memory. 10/10!.
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Christian, if you’re more offended by a rainbow and affirming LGBTQIA+ people than at the idea of God literally torturing millions of people in flames, then your theology is light years away from Divine love.
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If eternal torment is true, then God cannot be Love. If God had to sacrifice himself to himself to save humanity from himself, then God cannot be Love. If God excludes anyone when EVERYONE is a child of God, then God cannot be Love.
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Your heart isn’t deceitful. Your understanding isn’t fundamentally untrustworthy. You aren’t dirty or broken. You can trust yourself. Your wise mind always presents a solution. You don’t need fixing; you are good. You are completely complete, and every part of you is loved.
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People are less “walking away from Jesus” than they are walking away from the institution that hardly resembles anything he stood for.
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what do you mean there are no scriptures to support LGBTQ+ people?. um it’s called the bi-ble not the straight-ble.
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One thing is certain from Church history—there have been disagreements over “right doctrine” since the very beginning. To assume that your 21st Century, Western understanding is *the* correct expression or interpretation is short-sighted and arrogant.
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How the common understanding of the Bible collides with deconstruction (a series):. 👂🏼God whispered in the ear of each author to ensure an exact, word-for-word dictation. ✍🏼The author and/or scribe copied said words of God & made no errors along the way.
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Life is so much more peaceful when you don’t need to defend yourself to anyone, especially those who refuse to understand. It’s okay if your old church friends and pastor think you’re on the slippery slope. You don’t need their validation to trust you’re where you need to be.
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Dear Christian, you deny Jesus every time you deny Trans rights.
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XXXtra Hot 🌶️ Religious Trauma for: participating in mission trips, evangelizing in public places, leading worship, feeling called to ministry, and going to Bible college and/or seminary.
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Conversation isn’t possible with people who believe they are incapable of having holes in their worldview. Evangelicals have been given a neatly packaged system of beliefs, taught to defend it, and told they’re doing it right when they mistake accountability for “persecution.”.
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In case anyone wondered what it’s like behind the scenes with Mason, here ya go 😉 At the store, in the car, mid-edible—doesn’t matter. @masonmennenga will be like, “Oh it’s 2:37 I should tweet,” as the heavens open and a tweet descends like a dove with spicy heresy in its beak.
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How fucked is it that for so many years we had to convince ourselves that we were horrible sinners undeserving of love. That is traumatizing bullshit. You are so worthy of love, and whatever God is *really* like, They would never want you or me to feel like undeserving trash.
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UPDATE: I have reached out to @AndyStanley about facilitating a conversation about this topic.
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“How would you like to lose friends, community, and experience trauma while your worldview crumbles, identity is in question, and your mental health suffers?”. Oh, but sure, deconstruction is the ✨cool✨ thing to do.
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When people lash out with “read your Bible,” what they’re really saying is “read the Bible like I do.” Funny thing is that those people are typically the ones who aren’t very studied, but have accepted indoctrination as irrefutable truth.
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What is the Loki series, but an allegory for process theology?.
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I don’t think evangelicals understand that it was trying to follow Jesus wholeheartedly that led many of us to deconstruct. Whether you agree with our change of perspective doesn’t discredit this genuine transformative liberation—or daresay “salvation”—from harmful environments.
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I have seen @Thrice many times, but last night was one for the books. And, @dustinkensrue, thanks for going all out as always. Of all the new songs, Dandelion Wine surprisingly stood out to me. That tune was made to experience live. Can’t wait for the next album and tour!!
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Can I be real for a sec? I miss the good things I experienced in church. I miss consistent community, collective spiritual practices, worship leading, and even personal, “mystical” experiences. There’s plenty I don’t miss, but that Church Nostalgia™️ can really blindside you lol.
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I’m a walking paradox. I wonder about my faith being true, yet I can’t shake the Christ of my lived experience. I’m convinced justice is restorative, yet I want retribution for my enemies. I see the universe ablaze with Divinity, but I’m troubled by all our suffering.
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Maybe he’s born with it, maybe he’s just sexy from deconstructing.
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The Bible doesn’t need to be inerrant. The Bible doesn’t need to be infallible. The Bible doesn’t need to be “the word of God.”. The Bible doesn’t need to be “objective truth.”.
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If you don’t see Jesus standing in affirmation of Trans people, then you’re ignoring how until his very last breath Jesus was actively including everyone in the name of God whom the religious in-crowd considered didn’t belong. If that’s not your Easter story, it’s not Good News.
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The American Evangelical idea of love has become so convoluted that it no longer resembles Christlike love. Instead, “love” has become synonymous with conditional acceptance, fear-mongering, conformity, spiritual abuse, and exclusion of anyone who disagrees.
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God is not a man. The Divine is as feminine as They are masculine.
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I still find Jesus outside the bounds of Christianity, free of doctrinal obligations & performative religion. I find Christ in my fellow human, in the joys & injustices, in the certain uncertainty, and in the manifold beauty of the cosmos. In other words, Christ is all & in all.
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Were you constantly worried that God wouldn’t bless your future plans unless you said “Lord willing” or do you not have religious trauma??.
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Five truth pills too hard for evangelicals to swallow:. 💊No one is separated from God. 💊The Bible is not the word of God. 💊LGBTQIA+ don’t need to change who they are or who they love. 💊God’s pronouns are They/Them. 💊Eternal hell is mistranslation & mythology.
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That’s a whole lot of words for “let me do some bullshit mansplaining using PSA to say the same thing because I can’t let a woman be right” @D_B_Harrison
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The Church’s 7 Deadly Sins:.1) Bibliolatry.2) Nationalism.3) Abuse of Power.4) White Supremacy.5) Homophobia/Transphobia.6) Patriarchy.7) Consumerism.
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🎶 I AM A C-.I AM A C-H-.I AM A C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N 🎶. If you can hear this melody, then you’re in therapy and probably deconstructed too.
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In my opinion, so much healing would take place if evangelicalism would: learn to admit it doesn’t know it all, accept accountability especially from BIPOC and other marginalized identities, and do far more listening than talking. Only then will any real change take place.
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Deconstruction is easy to criticize when you’ve never experienced the emotional turmoil of a faith evolution. But I can assuredly say, if it was just about being cool or whatever naive, reductionist reason, then why’d we risk losing our faith communities, families, or certainty?.
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Pastors like John MacArthur and Mark Driscoll are proof that you can know the Bible like the back of your hand and not resemble the Jesus you claim to follow.
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“Hey, I’ve been noticing your posts lately and it’s been heavy on my heart to hear what led to your change in beliefs. ”.🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩.🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩.
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The only way this changes is if evangelicals are honest with the pain of their prolonged cognitive dissonance, or they sit contemplatively for long enough to survey their lived experience. Life isn’t so black-and-white, so why would truth or the Divine be either?.
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If the Bible is so clear, then Christians should agree on everything. If the Bible is so clear, then Christians should agree on everything. If the Bible is so clear, then Christians should agree on everything. If the Bible is so clear, then Christians should agree on everything.
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While I enjoy theology, it’s just a formal guessing game where everyone creates their own rules & declares themselves the winner. The mystery of existence is impossible to capture systematically, & that’s precisely why it’s widely disputed. And yet, wonder is still worthwhile.
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Evangelicalism is more concerned with convincing people of a literal afterlife hell than saving them from actual hell on earth like—poverty, healthcare inaccessibility, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, redemptive violence, nationalism, and much, much more.
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@masonmennenga If only someone could…I mean hypothetically of course…hack John Piper’s Twitter and change it to Mason’s name/pic. That would be *chef’s kiss* perfection.
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The “pronouns in bio 🤡” gang don’t care about pronouns until you start using “They” for God or “She” for the Holy Spirit. But pronouns don’t matter 😉.
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If you don’t love trans people—and no, I don’t mean “love” them by telling them “the truth” about their “sin”—then you don’t love God. And if you’ve got beef with that, then you need to take it up with Jesus. He might just help you repent 😉.
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God cannot be good if God is simultaneously Savior & Torturer of humanity. How do you trust a love that is both a gift & a threat in the same breath?. The gospel of “love me back or suffer eternally” paints God out to be a Cosmic Abuser, rather than the encapsulation of Goodness.
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One of my favorite parts of deconstruction is limitless exploration—spiritually, politically, sexually, etc. It’s restoring agency that was held captive by fear-ridden ideologies, and unbridling curiosity about life that was restricted because eternity was always at stake.
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Evangelicalism has fostered churches that demand (cheap) grace for the abuser, but demands the survivor to forgive, while the survivor bears the burdensome aftermath of gaslighting, shame, betrayal, and trauma.
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If you’re more offended by someone saying “god damn” than believing God would damn anyone to an eternity of torture, then you’re more concerned with empty external piety than a theology of real love.
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Honestly, how are we not collectively verging on a mental break in the midst of heading into our third year of a global pandemic? I’m tired, scared, and I hate this for all of us.
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Pastors are *not* mental health professionals. They should not assume the responsibility to treat people whom they are unqualified to help. Knowing the bounds of their expertise is instrumental to the highest well-being of their congregation.
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Dear “Pastor” Mark Driscoll: the last person who should talk about how to treat the church is the guy with a terrible track record of narcissistic abuse, who jokes about the trail of bodies he’s left behind, & still shamelessly promotes his pathetic, misogynistic brand of Xianity
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After another prominent evangelical pastor makes headlines for abuse, it’s impossible to ignore that this is a systemic issue. Biblically, pastors are told to protect and care for people, yet we keep seeing that image and megachurch empires are more important to preserve.
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@masonmennenga “Apokatastasis or bust, motherfuckers!”. Pretty sure that’s an exact quote from St. Gregory of Nyssa.
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Following the way of Christ is offending the religious by how inclusive your love is for people.
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Did you have to tithe off birthday and Christmas money growing up or do you not have religious trauma??.
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in a coffee shop accidentally eavesdropping on a clearly evangelical conversation and WHY ARE EVANGELICAL DUDES… was I like that too??? the cringe… THE CRINGE 😫🥴.
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@Shaded121 What an incredibly shortsighted and out-of-touch take. Trauma is trauma. It’s not a contest.
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Deconstruction is like taking off VR goggles for the first time after finding out what you thought was real life is actually distorted reality. And while it’s tempting to put the familiar goggles back on, you can’t un-see what you’ve now observed of true, unaltered reality.
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If you use theology to justify the rejection or exclusion of people, then you’re entirely missing the point. The aim of theology should be to inform best practices for love and inclusion, otherwise it’s utterly destructive and quite literally lethal.
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Evangelicalism taught me it’s holier to hate myself because I deserve wrath, rather than to love myself and believe I’m inherently good.
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Friend, take your time with deconstruction. Explore what you want, when you want—but there’s no rush. Your former church friends or family may want your dissertation on deconstruction, but it doesn’t mean you owe it to them. And please, be kind to yourself.
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@hillarylmcbride This was one of the most simply profound thoughts I’ve read in a long time. Sheesh. Thank you!.
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How you treat people is more important than what you believe. The problem with evangelicalism is that it’s reversed that order, which has given room for abusers to get away with horrible things all because they believe the “right things.”.
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What if the Story isn’t that you’re wretched & doomed to hell, so God brutally punished Jesus instead of you? What if, instead, Love has always been your truest reality—in which you “be,” belong, and toward which the universe is becoming?.
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Friendly reminder that Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus are not synonymous with an eternal bonfire to torture humans. If true, then God would be infinitely more diabolical than Hitler. It is impossible to affirm that God is love, and logically arrive at eternal torment.
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The moment I realized eternal torment was a house of cards constructed in fear, held together by tradition, and built upon the foundation of shoddy mistranslation, I experienced such a profound liberation that I felt more alive than ever. That changed everything for me.
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Did “I’m sexy and I know it” just become the official anthem of deconstruction?.
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