Early Christian ascetics counted seven deadly sins—pride, greed, envy, sloth, gluttony, wrath, and lust—that threaten our ascension to goodness (and, by extension, to heaven). But in an era ruled by an all-knowing Internet, a surreal beauty standard, and an insatiable appetite for material wealth, these vices are more of a playbook for success than a warning. What is a sin in 2026? For the Indulgence issue, we asked seven figures—Jamieson Webster, Dries Van Noten, Christine Sun Kim, Griffin Dunne, Mia Khalifa, Brontez Purnell, and Helen Molesworth—to examine how one sin threads its way through their life and work. Here, Kim reflects on wrath.
I’ve been giving a lecture recently, a performance where I hit audiences with scenes from television series and films featuring deaf characters. Over and over and over, the audience watches these characters get shot, get drowned, get stabbed, and die. The clips are gruesome. This section of the talk is meant to go on and on and make my point for me: In the televisual subconscious, there is a need to eliminate deaf people and deafness.
After one of these lectures not long ago, I gathered with a group of deaf people from the audience, including Greg Hlibok. In 1988, Hlibok played a pivotal role in bringing Gallaudet University—the first and foremost university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students—its first deaf president. I was eight at the time, and to me, he and other protest leaders represented the beginning of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) era. While we were having a glass of wine, I received a text from a hearing family member, who shared a New York Times article about the first FDA-approved gene therapy treatment for a rare genetic form of deafness. They mindlessly wrote: “amazing.”
This treatment and the media narrative around it are in line with the countless instances of deaf death in popular media. It is eugenics, plain and simple. The broad deployment of these gene therapies erases any room for ethics or nuance in the broader cultural understanding of deafness not as a pathology to be fixed, but, as deaf activists have argued, as a crucial part of human biodiversity.
I was 10 when the ADA was signed into law in 1990. I witnessed firsthand what that accessibility looked like as it blossomed: captions on TV, interpreters in classrooms, protections in the doctor’s office, and widespread access to spaces that had been barred to deaf participants. As my rights expanded, so did my life and my identity. I was able to pursue my passions and gain a platform as an artist. Now I am watching that progress erode. Almost 10 years ago, I made a series of drawings called “Degrees of Deaf Rage.” At this point, rage is not enough. Wrath is.
When I look at my wrath closely, I get sick. I live alongside deaf people who have been deeply affected by inaccessibility. Two common injustices haunt me the most. One is the familial isolation that many of us encounter, especially with parents who never took the time or effort to learn sign language. That severing of a parental relationship cuts deep. The other is language deprivation, where deaf kids are blocked from learning sign language during their critical language acquisition periods. Language deprivation impacts people for life.
Disability rights are not perfect, but they have propelled me to where I am today. In moments of darkness, I am buoyed by the words of Dr. Corinna S. Hill, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf. She has pointed out how, throughout history, the dominant culture has always tried to assimilate and eliminate deafness. They isolated us in mental institutions. They prevented us from learning sign language. They sterilized us. But we are still here, and our culture is still strong.
Yet the dark moments are dark. Deaf people have survived countless attempts at erasure, but this one feels different. We are being erased before we are even born. I fear for my community, our history, our culture, and our language. And the fear grows into anger, into rage, into wrath.
I texted my family member back: “unsend ‘amazing’ please.” They reacted with a thumbs-up.
More Deep Dives on the State of the Seven Deadly Sins
What Mia Khalifa Learned From Two Long Years of Celibacy
The Laziness Canon: Helen Molesworth on Artists Who Made Great Work by Doing Nothing
In an Ozempic-Suffused Scene, Brontez Purnell on Being a ‘Fake Skinny Bitch’
Dries Van Noten Unpacks the Greed That Made Him Step Back From Fashion
According to Psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster, Pride Gets a Bad Rap
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